PC: It’s interesting to me how you stumbled into photography; will you elaborate on your starting point?
Jamie: It really started out as a hobby. I think I was around 12 or so, and I knew the photographer for the Porsche Panorama through some friends of mine. He had a dark room in his bathroom, and I used to watch him and think it was so cool. Shortly after that, my parents gave me a Pentax Spotmatic camera. Back then, it was the kind of camera with a built-in lens, and I built a dry darkroom under the steps and had to carry in each chemical and just hope I would not spill it.
Then, around 1967, I was a 1A and you had to be eligible for a year and not be drafted, and at the time I could already print pretty well. Not to pat myself, but my instructor John McWilliams’ grievance with me was that my prints were too good. Since I printed in the dark room, so much experimenting, I had a pretty good sense of how to make prints.
What I was trying to explain in seminar was the concept of pre-visualization. Especially in showing those two shots of the Cade’s Cove, before and after. A normal person would look at that and go that sucks, but there was something in it I just saw--that lonely tree. Had it been film I may have not shot that. Digital is the inexpensive way of shooting everything.
PC: Did you teach yourself all of the digital software?
Jamie: I learned Photoshop from scratch because they didn’t even have a manual at the time. I went out to Seabolt to learn some of the programs, and of course, back then, they had Adobe and Fractal Painter. I only had souped up PC’s at the time, and I saw this Alta Mira group, and I was just fascinated by what they were doing, so I hung around their booth for a while.
After that, I started working with Dr. Alvy Ray Smith who invented Pixar, and they flew me all over the US to conventions and other events, working with Alta Mira Composer as a beta tester. At the time, their program was really sluggish, and then eventually Photoshop came out. So in 1995 I started Cook Editions, which is my printing business. In 1995, it was $50 a megabyte, but now you can buy a 4-gigabyte compact flash card at Cosco for about $29.95. My very first hard drive had 5 megabytes and cost $500. Can you believe that? My phone now has 16 gigabytes.
PC: How did you get into Printing?
Jamie: I was doing digital art through Alta Mira and photostyler. Back then we only had a dot matrix printer. So I would gather up my files and get them printed at Binders on an Iris printer. The nice thing about that printer is you can print on any substrate. However, they were extremely expensive. So I contacted John Cohne of Cohne Editions and Ink Jet Mall in Vermont and got a two-week training session with him on printing when I bought my first Iris Printer.
PC: So you were one of the first people to break into digital printing?
Jamie: I was the first in Atlanta. So I could charge per print, and people would come to me to get their images printed. Now I just can’t compete because you can buy a great Epson printer that prints beautifully for $4900. Not to mention they print bigger than the machines I own. I own three Iris Printers, but I have had to cannibalize one for the parts because they don’t make them anymore.
These days I still print, not so much commercially anymore, just enough to help pay the bills here and there. I also have a small consulting firm on Printing. I show photographers how to color manage and calibrate their monitor and things like that. For example, that blue shirt you have on today you should never color manage your photos in. That blue sweater reflects into the screen and makes things cooler looking, and when you go to print the image it makes it much more yellow. Your eyes play tricks with you too. That light looks normal, but your camera sees it as green because it is green. Once you start color correcting, you should let your eyes rest every 30 minutes. If that window was a north light window, you should stare out that window for a few seconds and that resets your eyeball. It is much more complicated than you think it is.
PC: So what color should you wear when you are color correcting your photos?
Jamie: Black or 18% gray. And you should never have lights that reflect into the screen either. All of my computers have canopies over them. I don’t have any direct light in my room, otherwise you can’t judge color, the densities, or how light and dark your images. Also, you need a color corrected light box right next to you, and you need to have your monitor calibrated to 500 Kelvin. A lot of people say it is 6500, but that is the printing standard in Europe.
PC: I was also very interested in your road trip you talked about at seminar. Will you elaborate on your experience?
Jamie: Well, I want to do it every 6 months now. I went by myself too. My wife didn’t want to go. She had a great time decorating and exercising while I was gone for 28 days. I would have to say Aspen and Utah were my favorite places on the trip. I am not a religious person, but if there is a God or Mother Nature, it is not here. I went in October so it wasn’t too cold and the weather was perfect.
I planned this trip to shoot a lot near water. I actually went on Google Earth to find a few places I would like to go, and of course I had a gps with me. So I kind of had a route of where I wanted to go and I just mapped out some interstates near a few places I knew I wanted to stop and that was my plan. Originally, I thought along the way I could just photograph, but the truth is, you are never in the right light. You are always driving around 10 or 11 am or even at noon, but fortunately for me it never rained. The weather was perfect at that time of year. I don’t think I ever even had clouds until I got to Utah, and then I only had them for one day. I stayed in Aspen for 7 days to see a lot of things I wanted to see, and I stayed in Chicago for about the same amount of time. But of course my back never had bothered me, and it went out in Chicago, so I didn’t get to photograph as much as I wanted to there.
PC: Did you assist for a variety of people when you first got out on your own?
Jamie: Timing was right for me, I was very lucky. I was one of those people who found a profession I wanted at an early age. I lived and breathed photography. There was nothing else I wanted to do. I realized early enough what I wanted to do, and I stuck with it. I was in the right place at the right time sometimes, but I knew I was at the right place. Everyone should assist to get a sense of the real world, how to deal with clients, and get great experience you might not get otherwise. Fortunately for me, I know how to design. I mean I have never taken a design class ever, but I just have that ability. When it looks and feels right, it is usually designed right. If you are a freelance assistant you are not going to learn as much as if you were a full time assistant. Take Jerry for example, he worked for me for maybe three years. Be there and ask questions. I felt it was my responsibility as a photographer to teach and help other people. As Jerry puts it, I have forgotten more things than most photographers know. I have been doing this for 40 years now. Experience does count for something. Make a mistake, screw up sometime. If you love photography, you will find a way to do it.
Portfolio Center students share a strong desire to communicate ideas, the willingness to let go of preconceived notions, and the compulsion to learn new ways of thinking. These qualities are fostered by the school’s constant stream of industry bigwigs, who bring their varied and colorful perspectives from all over the country. These creatives, who are always generous with their time and energy, tend to hang out with students, conducting informal workshops and continuing the day’s discussions over dinner. Often, what results are provocative interviews—written, shot, and designed by PC students.
