Zero Purpose

Telling stories with pictures, whether it is a single image or 24 of them strung together per second. As a camera operator or as a camera assist, stills or motion, I just enjoy the process of capturing the image. For stills, I have my trusty Canon 5Dmkii that I have spent so much time over the years shooting so many hours of time-lapse footage. When if finally dies, I will probably shed more than a single tear. For motion, I've used Sony F55, Sony FS700, Blackmagick Cinema 4K, GoPro, Canon DSLRs and a Sony A7sii to shoot in the dead of night using nothing but the light of the full moon. I used to think camera manufactures like Red and Canon brought new cameras to market frequently, but that's glacier speeds compared to the VR world. The mulitude of GoPro configurations—Odyssey, Omni, Freedom360, Hero360—to Jaunt, Ozo, and custom DSLR rigs we've configured on our own.

I started in the video industry by learning how to operate studio cameras in high school as part of a church's AV department. While in college, I found the only job that had the word video in the description through the school's student center. I learned more at this job than I ever did through school. I asked so many questions of the engineering staff on the whys/hows of the various pieces of equipment. The chief engineer learned that he could just point me to a book on his shelf as a valid answer to my questions. This was the time frame of when non-linear editing was just becoming possible and was only considered an offline option.

Even when my job was in media engineering, I still had an itch to be shooting. With the purchase of my 5Dii, I have been shooting time-lapse and shorts at nights and on weekends. My past couple of jobs have been actual production roles. In 2013, I was a 2^nd AC, DIT, truck driver, and anything else needed for a feature film titled "Occupy: Texas". For the past 2 years, I have been heavily involved in live action VR/360 video production. Even with that as my day job, I still continue to shoot short pieces just to keep scratching that creative itch.

I'm also a DIY tinkerer. A few years ago, I got into the world of Arduino, and have since created my own custom camera gear. As my first project, I used the designs of motion control time-lapse slider that the designer made available publicly. With the provided Arduino code, all I had to do was solder all of the components together, assmeble the rail, drill/tap the holes, and then I could finally start to use it. Since that project, I have assembled my own camera slider out of aluminium, and built another Arduino based focus controller. In VR, I have even built custom DSLR rigs to use 4 cameras to capture high quality time-lapse in 360 Video. Just because something does't exist should not be a road block.