David Johndrow

American Photographer

David Johndrow is a fine art photographer living in Austin, Texas. After studying photography the University of Texas, he began shooting commercial work as well as pursuing his more personal fine art photography.

David�s continuing series, Terrestrials, combines his passion for gardening and photography and features macro nature photographs of animals and plants that inhabit his Hill Country, Texas garden. To realize his vision, he prints with silver gelatin, platinum/palladium, gum-bichromate and gumoil.

His photographs are part of the Wittliff Collection of Southwestern and Mexican Photography, as well as in many private collections.

All about David Johndrow:

AAP: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer?
I took a darkroom class in art school and fell in love with the process. The first roll of film I shot I processed and printed myself.

AAP: Where did you study photography?
I learned photography at The University of Texas, but I built my own darkroom and started working on my own. I really honed my printing skills working as a printer in a photo lab. Just the shear volume of work I printed during that time made me a better printer.

AAP: Do you have a mentor or role model?
I can�t say I had any mentors except for photographers like Irving Penn who I loved and was inspired by.

AAP: How long have you been a photographer?
I�ve been a photographer for 30 years.

AAP: Do you remember your first shot? What was it?
My first shot was of my friends who were in a band. I had other friends who were actors and comedians, so I started taking lots of portraits for peoples publicity shots.

AAP: What or who inspires you?
I am inspired creatively by many different kinds of artists, but my biggest inspiration is the natural world. Rarely do I go in search of photographs; rather things just appear to me when I spend enough time outdoors. Gardening is my biggest obsession next to art.

AAP: How could you describe your style?
I have lots of styles but my most well know work is done in macro. I guess the one common thing in all my work is a simple graphic composition.

AAP: Do you have a favorite photograph or series?
I love Matt Mahurin, especially his portraits of Tom Waits.

AAP: What kind of gear do you use?
I shoot with a Hasselblad on 120 film.

AAP: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images?
Although I shoot on film, I edit my images on the computer. It helps me group images in a series or arrange them for exhibition.

AAP: Favorite(s) photographer(s)?
My favorite photographer is Irving Penn.

AAP: What advice would you give a young photographer?
I would tell young photographers to shoot a lot of images, do a lot of experiments, and try to learn some different printing processes.

AAP: What mistake should a young photographer avoid?
Don�t try and shoot photos of things you think others would like but shoot subjects you are most interested in. Every subject has been done before, so try and put your own spin on it.

AAP: What are your projects?
The project I�m working on is close-ups of natural textures.

AAP: Your best memory as a photographer?
My best memory is of shooting the pyramid at Chichen Itsa. It was at the solstice and I wanted a photo of the serpent shadow on the steps, but it was a cloudy, rainy day. Suddenly, right before closing, the sun burst out and I got some great shots.

AAP: Your worst souvenir as a photographer?
Don�t know

AAP: The compliment that touched you most?
�Every time I look at your photograph I see something different�.

AAP: If you were someone else who would it be?
No one else.

AAP: Your favorite photo book?
Irving Penn: Passages

Galleries:

Catherine Couturier Gallery

ClampArt

Oswald Gallery

Website:

www.davidjohndrow.com

Selected Work:

More Great Photographers To Discover

Wolfgang Bohusch

Nationality: Austria

Born: 1985

Bohusch decided to become photographer at the early age of 13. He began experimenting with old darkroom equipment of his grandmother and shooting with a 35mm camera.

After studying photography for 5 years at die Graphische, Vienna he started working as freelance Production Manager, Location Scout and later Photographer or D.o.P and Director for advertising film production companies.

On extensive travels he is working on his personal projects. (…)

All About Wolfgang Bohusch

Sarah Elliott

Nationality: American

Born: 1984

Sarah Elliott was born in the USA in 1984 and received a degree in photography in New York City at Parsons School of Design. Elliott assisted Stanley Greene for a year before moving to Nairobi, Kenya, where she is currently based. Elliott has traveled extensively and is interested largely in documenting social issues, with a focus on women. Her photographs have appeared in such publications as Vanity Fair Italy, Monocle, Financial Times Weekend Magazine and Time. In 2010, (…)

All About Sarah Elliott

Sarah Moon

Nationality: French

Born: 1941

A fashion and commercial photographer since 1968, and also a filmmaker, Sarah Moon is known for her dreamlike images and her representation of femininity as free from time and context, as living in a fairy world. Although Moon has been a major participant in the world of fashion for more than three decades, she has carefully carved out her own niche -- a signature style that dispenses with the erotically suggestive poses favored by many of her male counterparts in (…)

All About Sarah Moon

Bryan Adams

Nationality: Canadian

Born: 1959

Adams works as a photographer as well as musician, aside from being published in British Vogue, L'uomo Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, Interview magazine and i-D, among others, he has also shot advertising campaigns for Guess Jeans, Sand, Converse, Montblanc, John Richmond, Fred Perry, and more recently for Escada.
He has won Lead Awards twice in Germany for his fashion work, most recently June 2012 and previously in 2006. Other photographic endeavours include founding (…)

All About Bryan Adams

Jos�phine Cardin

Nationality: Dominican

Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Josephine Cardin is a fine arts photographer who grew up in South Florida, until moving to Boston, MA in 2006.

Presently, Cardin has been developing her figurative work, inspired by music, dance, and the human themes of loneliness, isolation, melancholy, love and loss. Cardin uses both dancers, and self-portraiture to illustrate scenes that bewitch, seduce, and explore our human sensibilities; through abstract stories with a (…)

All About Jos�phine Cardin

Maren Elize Klemp

Nationality: Norwegian

"I grew up in a small town outside of Oslo, and started photography when I was a teenager. My father bought me my first camera when I was seventeen, and I immediately knew that I wanted to become a photographer. Writing was one of my passions in this period of my life, but I also was searching for a way to express myself visually. I had no talent for either painting and drawing, so photography naturally became the right medium for me.

Unfortunately I dropped out (…)

All About Maren Elize Klemp

Gustave Le Gray

Nationality: French

Born: 1820 - Died: 1884

Gustave Le Gray was born in 1820 in Villiers-le-Bel, Val-d'Oise. He was originally trained as a painter. He even exhibited at the salon in 1848 and 1853. He then crossed over to photography in the early years of its development. He made his first daguerreotypes by 1847. His early photographs included portraits; scenes of nature such as Fontainebleau Forest; and buildings such as ch�teaux of the Loire Valley. He taught photography to students such as Charles N�gre, Henri (…)

All About Gustave Le Gray

Chen Jiagang

Nationality: Chinese

Born: 1962

Born in 1962 in Chong Qing, Chen Jiagang began his career as a celebrated architect and real estate developer before making the transition to photography. In 1999, he was named one of twelve "Outstanding Young Architects" by the United Nations. Jiagang is the founder of the Sichuan Upriver Museum, the first private museum in China and the author of Third Front (Timezone 8 Limited, 2007). He currently lives and works in Beijing.

(…)

All About Chen Jiagang

Chester Higgins Jr.

Nationality: American

Born: 1946

Higgins, an American photographer, has used his camera to examine the life and culture of people of African descent � seeking reflections of himself in the world of humanity. After four decades as a staff photographer for The New York Times, he recently retired.

His mission statement is as follows: �Wrestling with issues of memory, place and identity, I see my life as a narrative and my photography as its expression. My art gives visual voice to my personal and (…)

All About Chester Higgins Jr.

Kimiko Yoshida

Nationality: Japanese

Born: 1963

Kimiko Yoshida is a Japanese visual artist who was born in 1963 and lives in Europe since 1995.

Subtle, fictional, paradoxical, Kimiko Yoshida�s Bachelor Brides form an ensemble of quasi-monochromatic self-portraits, fragments of an intimate web, elaborating on a singular story: the feminine condition in Japan. Her images are large format, luminous squares, underlining her fantasy-bio epic. While still very young, Kimiko Yoshida was struck by the story of (…)

All About Kimiko Yoshida