http://jasonmichaelreynolds.com/

Jason Reynolds Art, Federal Way, Federal Way, WA (2026)

06/21/2022

2006. Grand Canyon, Arizona.

This was the first time I took my D50 out to really see what it could do.

I remember being absolutely blown away by how much I could enlarge an image on my computer or even on my LCD display to check if the image was in focus.

Film shooting left me guessing if the image was sharp or not... not to mention if it was exposed properly or lit enough.

I had no idea the inner workings of a digital camera so I mostly left it on the “auto” setting. I remember being frustrated when my auto focus kept tracking the brightest object, and since the canyon was backlighting most of my images, my camera would lock on the background and all my portraits were out of focus.

I had no idea how to correct that.

It’s amazing how much I have learned since then.

I must have shot hundreds of images. I had no idea how to properly edit photos so most of them were just straight out of the camera.

Most of them I thought were just “meh.”

But recently I went back into those old photos and edited them using what I know now of digital photography.

WOW!

06/14/2022

2005. Puyallup Fair.

This was the first “outing” where I took my “big camera.”

I was really enamored with my “zoom lens.” I could be 25 yards off and shoot like I was right next to the subject.

This was really appealing to me (the eternal introvert).

I didn’t do much as far as settings with the camera. I pretty much just left it in “auto” mode.

I would say that about 25% of the shots I took were actually in focus without motion blur.

I still had a lot to learn about shooting in lower light.

You see, “auto settings” attempt to make the lightest part of your subject “true white.”

But the camera tended to do this by decreasing the shutter speed to let in more light. So, in some cases the shutter would open for 1/4-second.

Now, a quarter of a second may not seem like a very long time, but if my subject was moving, it would be blurry.

And as a matter of fact, even if the subject was STILL, most of my shots would turn out blurry, due to something called “camera-shake.” When you press the shutter down, you slightly jostle the camera.

This can be eliminated with the use of a tripod, but who has room to lug one of those around in these kinds of situations.

It would be several years before I had a good grasp on how to actually shoot in low light.

Out of the entire outing, these three shots are really the only ones that turned out decent.

The clowns are probably my favorite.

06/13/2022

2005. This isn’t a particularly “good” photo.

It’s not a great composition, and there have been better sunsets to shoot.

But this is my very FIRST photo on a DSLR.

Since I was going into the graphic design business, I figured would need a good if not GREAT camera to shoot my own images.

Coming from a film camera, I had NO idea about ISO, no experience with things like light balance, and no real experience with photo-correction or any post-production process.

I wouldn’t even delete images I didn’t like. My ENORMOUS 1gb SD card (purchased for about $100) was filled with junk photos and good photos alike. I had assumed I would need to buy a new SD card when it got full. It didn’t occur to me to just delete the old pictures.

You just can’t do that with a film camera.

I would just find a composition I liked, turn the k**b to the most similar “icon” on the camera to what I saw through the viewfinder and click the shutter.

I think this one was the “landscape” icon.

It would be years before I had the courage to try my hand at manual settings.

I picked out a Nikon D-50 as a starter camera. I figured since I already had a couple lenses from my old Nikon N-65 35mm film camera, I could just get a new body and use my existing lenses.

I was wrong. Apparently film camera lenses are completely incompatible with digital lenses.

I had to start over. It was not cheap.

Since purchasing my D-50, every camera since has been a Nikon. You cannot use Nikon lenses on Canon cameras, and visa-versa.

If I had to do it again, I probably would have gone with a Canon camera. People seem to like their Rebels and I am really impressed with their performance.

But, one thing I have learned being an artist, is that all the equipment in the world won’t give you an eye for good design... or finding a good composition.

You can make good art and take a good photo on a camera phone, a disposable camera, or even an old Polaroid.

You work with what you’ve got.

Behind all good photography is a good photographer.

06/12/2022

2004. Red Willow Vineyard

Years ago, my wife’s family planted a Vineyard in the Yakima Valley. The Red Willow grapes were amongst the very first wine grapes planted in the state of Washington.

The Vineyard’s care has been passed down in her family from one generation to the next.

This chapel was built atop one of the sprawling hills of the vineyard using stones dug from the surrounding hillside.

The Chapel at Red Willow Vineyard is one of the most recognizable icons of Washington Wine Country.

After taking this photo in 2004 on my Nikon N65 35mm, I did a subsequent 24”x36” oil painting of it and gave it to my wife’s family for Christmas later that year.

***Seriously though. Check out the pics of the vineyard on their FB page. It is one of the most scenic [hidden] locations in the state of Washington.

06/11/2022

2004. My wife in Kauai. Again on the Nikon N-65 35mm.

I’ve never had a lot of confidence taking portraits. It was the same with paintings.

I’m an introvert by nature.

I did a lot of self-portraits in art classes and Very few portraits of others, leading some people to think I was just full of myself, if they looked at my body of work as a whole.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I hate doing a thing poorly. And if I mess up something I’m creating, I would prefer to mess up a picture or painting of myself than have someone else disappointed with my capture.

So I did self portraits.

And then when my wife married me, she got to also be my guinea pig.

Eh, she knew what she was getting into.

I painted a whole series of us together while we were still dating!

This is one of my favorite captures of her in Kauai.

06/10/2022

2004. My wife and I honeymooned in Kauai (HI). They call it “The Garden Isle” and with good reason.

There is a natural archway cutting through a cliff face on the beach just out of frame to the lower right formed by volcanic rock.

If there was ever a time I wish I had a D-SLR, it was this trip. I would have taken a thousand photos easily of just this coastline. The Na’pali coastline is unlike any other.

But, since I only had my N-65, I setttled for 36 shots on one roll of film. Here’s a few of them.

06/10/2022

2003. We were assigned to do a portrait in my old photography class and I tried a couple on my old Nikon 35mm.

This is my old roommate Todd. I remember shooting a few roles of film in a couple separate locations and only getting 2 “good” pictures.

When you can’t instantly view the shot, you could have had everything in perfect focus and the perfect settings and still miss your shot due to “camera shake” or messing up the horizon lines, or one of a hundred little things, you won’t know until you get into the dark room.

This one at least turned out.

I remember it being January when we did this and there was snow on the ground. Todd was most likely freezing cold.

You can tell.

We most likely shot this between games of NBA LIVE or NHL Hitz.

Life of college seniors...

06/09/2022

2003. I took my very first photography class my senior year of college. I remember I just wanted to learn how to take crisp photos with blurry backgrounds like the professionals.

We had to purchase a heavy duty camera with exchangeable lenses (called a SIngle Lens Reflex or SLR).

I purchased a NIkon N65 with a kit lens. I arbitrarily chose a Nikon camera based on a line from the movie "Gotcha" featuring Anthony Edwards.

"You jumped in the moat with MY Nikon?"

Yeah. Nikons must be top of the line then?...

Anyway, In this class, we would learn to develop our own film in a dark room using developing chemicals, and our own photo-paper.

It is a painstakingly slow and difficult process and it takes a LOT of trial and error to do it properly.

This is called a "print sheet." Basically, you take the roll of film, cut them into strips and develop thumbnails of all your shots on one sheet of photo paper. This is how you would see what shots turned out. Then, you develop any one of the photos individually.

There are no "undo" buttons when developing your own film so if you overexposed something in the dark room (gave it too much light for too long), the image would 'blow out' and the highlights and details would start fading. Not long enough, and the photos would be too dark.

The concept is a lot like cooking food in the oven. You have to "know" when your photo is "done" so you don't undercook it or burn it.

Then, there was this one kid who came in with a fancy shmancy DIGITAL-SLR camera. The thing must have cost him a BOATLOAD back in 2003 and the instructor didn't have the heart to tell him that a film camera was required.

He didn't realize that most of the class time would be spent in the dark room developing film... but the teacher let him in the class anyway. And he didn't do ANY of the developing the rest of us did.

I remember being pretty brutal on his photos in our critiques. Yeah, the photos he took may look better because they are 'digital,' but I knew a thing or two about digital imaging (being a graphic design MAJOR) so I could tell him how his photos could be improved, both compositionally AND digitally. What you can do in Photoshop with a little 'slider' to adjust brightness or contrast takes HOURS and multiple attempts in the darkroom to do it manually.

We spent a little time learning the actual technique of being a phototographer and I learned about aperature and shutterspeed, (but not about ISO strangely).

I wish I could have developed all of my photos I took in that class, but it was only a month long and it would have taken me an entire semester at least.

This class was my foundation in the principles of photography.

06/08/2022

2000. This is a mashup of the very first painting I ever made and the photo used to create it.

Up until this point, my art had all been with pencils, charcoal, or pastels.

The project was to teach us how to mix colors to create a different color. We were only allowed to use primary colors (red, blue, yellow) and white.

We drew a small repeating pattern on the panel and we had to change colors at every line of that pattern.

This was the result.

I ended up majoring in art, though at the time, I wasn’t sure what I would pursue.

I double tracked the major with drawing/painting and printmaking/graphic design.

I used the latter set of skills to superimpose the painting back over the original photo.

I can’t take credit for the photo itself. My professor took it.

It was not only my first painting, it was my first self-portrait and one of my most successful pieces to date (in my opinion).

06/07/2022

2001. I was a sophomore in college.

Some friends and I had started a breakdancing crew and would dance until the wee hours of the morning in the lounge of our dorm every Friday night. At our peak there were around 20 or so of us.

We called ourselves the “Hulkamaniaks.”

Sometimes we would even take our little show on the road and perform. I remember one time we put on a show at the First Presbyterian church in Spokane for an auditorium full of seniors.

Not college seniors.

Seniors. 75 (what we called it back then) seventy-five-year-olds.

It was an absolute blast. I think we even made the local newspaper.

I took plenty of pictures of us break dancing in the dorms on that old 35mm I bought a couple years earlier for my trip to New York.

Taking Pictures back then was an investment.

You couldn’t just delete the photo and take it again if you didn’t like it.

You had to pay to develop your film so each shot was worth literal “money.”

So we would each try to strike the coolest pose or hit the “dopest freeze” for the camera.

And then you just had to pray it turned out.

Here’s one I got of my best friend and roommate.

I remember seeing this one in the stack of pictures waiting in line at Costco and just going “duuuude!”

That is one of the little joys I miss about those times.

Picking up photos from the store and rifling through them, excited at the prospect of seeing the photos for the first time.

Like a little mini-Christmas.

Some of them didn’t turn out... but the ones that did...

Duuuuude...

06/04/2022

I was 17 years old when I took this picture back in 1999.

I had never been to New York.

Our baseball team went to nationals in Stamford, CT so me and a teammate jumped on a train to grand central station and just got lost in Manhattan.

I really didn’t know anything about photography back then. All I had was a little 35mm $20 point and shoot that I bought for this road trip.

I didn’t know how to frame a shot. I didn’t really have any knowledge of the principles of design. I just knew I liked what I saw, so I pointed a camera at it and pushed the shutter down.

I had 24 pictures I could fit in that roll of film, and I wouldn’t know how any of them turned out until I got back home and got the film developed.

This one was the best in the lot.

This began my photography journey 21 years ago.

Jason Reynolds Art

06/21/2022

06/14/2022

06/13/2022

06/12/2022

06/11/2022

06/10/2022

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06/09/2022

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06/07/2022

06/04/2022

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