Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Scott Thompson's Bio


Scott Thompson, born 1976 in Van Nuys, California, has always had a love of art. His formal training began at Humboldt State University, where he took many drawing and painting courses. Later he moved to San Diego, where he was given an old Olympus OM-1 by his grandfather. Scott decided to take a black and white photography course at Mesa College and was immediately hooked. He started working at a camera store and continued to take courses in photography. Scott has also served time in a 1-hour photo lab, worked as a resort portrait photographer, and has done some band photography while living in L.A.

Currently, Scott is living in Truckee, after moving there April 2002 with his wife and son to live the mountain lifestyle. Living there has allowed nature photography to become his primary art focus. He loves to get out and explore the beauty the Tahoe area has to offer.

Scott Thompson photographs with a variety of cameras and film. With one of his methods, he uses his Canon EOS3 and Fuji Velvia 35mm slide film. His film is processed by a professional lab and sent back to Scott where he takes it to his digital darkroom. This is where Scott becomes what has been called a hybrid photographer. Meaning he mixes traditional shooting with digital printing. Scott scans his film into the computer by using a Canon Canoscan FS4000US run by VueScan software. Next he color corrects the image in Adobe Photoshop to match the original transparency as best as possible.

Scott’s newest method is purely digital. Scott owns and uses a Canon 1DS Mark III, a 21.1 mega pixel digital camera. Even though Scott has mostly gone digital, he still tries to keep a traditional look and feel to his photographs and prints. Scott prints on an Epson Stylus Pro 9600, one of Epson’s 44” wide archival inkjet printers. The paper he uses for his limited edition prints is a fine art, 100% cotton, and acid free paper.