Photography and commentary from John Fujimagari

About

A long time Film shooter, i gave it up for over ten years until I bought a cell phone with a camera in 2004. I quickly grew dissatisfied with the image quality on the cell phones. It took me until 2007 to buy a DSLR and I’ve been shooting Digital ever since, and love it. I’m a user of Nikon equipment both past and present. I try to be a student of the craft and have worked at improving my photography. I’ve taken the Nikon School 4 times (with Larry Frank) and workshopped with Courtney Milne in the Cypress Hills. I’ve attended seminars by John Shaw and John Sexton. Since going digital, I workshopped with Darwin Wiggett in Alberta and Saskatchewan; and Kelly Funk in British Columbia. I’m still high from a seminar with Joe McNally in Calgary. Some of my pictures were published in “Calgary, A Year In Focus” for the 1988 Olympics.

As with many other shooters I know, I started taking pictures in school. I took photography courses through high school, and photographed for the school yearbook. My first camera (not including my Mom’s Kodak Brownie Starflash) a Fujica 35mm rangefinder and then graduated to a Konica Autoreflex T3 SLR. I passed over a Nikon F for the Konica because I was taken in by the fancy new auto exposure feature (as opposed to the manual Nikon F), something I was to regret later after I wore out the Konica. I then went to the Nikon FM (which I still have) and later added a N2000 as a backup body.

My earliest influence was Ansel Adams. I was then working in Black and White with mostly Kodak Plus X Pan, sometime Kodak Tri X Pan and occasionally Kodak Panatomic X, it all depended on what was in the big “roll your own”. In school I learned developing and printing the film and spent many hours in the darkroom. Adams was easy to relate to, using the same processes, albeit with a much larger film format. At school I also discovered Edward Steichen, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Robert Cappa, Elliott Porter and Margaret Bourke-White. At home my mother was a fan of Yousuf Karsh and knew the story of Karsh’s famous picture of Winston Churchill. Roloff Beny was considered a local around Taber and I saw his book “To Everything There Is A Season” published in Canada’s Centennial Year, in many homes. In the ’80s Galen Rowell, John Shaw, John Sexton, Pete Turner, Jody Cobb, Art Wolfe and Courtney Milne came to prominent attention for me. Most of these photographers were shooting Kodachrome, my main film in the 80s. I used K64 regularly and K25 when feeling adventurous. Kodak Vericolor Pro filled in for print film duties. More Recently Joe McNally, Moose Peterson, Tony Sweet and William Neill have my attention. Again these shooters are all digital converts, just as I am.

I’m now shooting the Nikon D300s and have upgraded to mostly pro quality glass, as I have a preference for fast, constant aperture zoom lenses. I’ve also started posting images from my iPhone and am experimenting with vintage film cameras.

Why did the Pelican Cross the River?

  1. Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
  2. Calgary, Alberta, Canada
  3. Jasper, Alberta, Canada
  4. Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada
  5. Flagstaff, AZ, USA
  6. Salinas, CA, USA
  7. Fort Benton, MT, USA
  8. Monument Valley, UT, USA
  9. Sun City, AZ, USA
  10. Port Hueneme, CA, USA
  11. West Yellowstone, MT, USA
  12. Bend, OR, USA
  13. Ocean Shores, WA, USA
  14. Escalante, UT, USA
  15. Independence, CA, USA
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