Photos-RLJ: Outdoor Photography

Biography

Ron Jensen has been taking photos ever since he picked up an old folding camera at the age of six. The camera had a hole in the bellows which rendered it mostly useless; but by the age of eight, Ron's parents had given him a brand new Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, and he has been making pictures ever since.

Though the balance of his professional career has been spent in offices, in his spare time, Ron has been an avid outdoorsman his entire life. Thus, it was natural that his photographic interests would eventually turn to wildlife, landscapes, and outdoor sporting events. And it is probably just as natural that eventually, he would take steps to share his art with others, as he does with this exhibit.

Artist's Statement

My father always told me that nothing is so constant as change, and a paradigm change in all of our lives over the past two decades has been the adoption of computer technology in almost every field of human endeavor, including photography. Computer aided design has given us a breath-taking array of wide-angle and telephoto lenses and enhanced light sensitivity to an extent that we would not have thought possible just a few years ago. And digital photo processing and transmittal allows us a means of publishing and sharing photos that is close to mind boggling.

An important challenge, however, is not to lose the substance of the photographic art in the midst of this new technology. To me, making and sharing a photograph essentially consists of the photographer capturing a scene and then saying to others, "Hey, take a look at this - it's beautiful (or startling, thought provoking, moving, unique, etc)." I think it is important not to lose this and especially important not to make photography about how whiz-bang we can make a picture look with enough post-capture manipulation. Just as the best camera is always the one you have with you, the fundamental ingredient in engaging pictures will always be the eye and imagination of the photographer.