aka Dumuziel Photography

I’m a musician, composer and photography geek based in Austin, TX. I’m not a professional photographer: I shoot only what I want to shoot and when I want to shoot it. I do it purely out of love and the bloody minded obsession to create art.

I was born in Austin, TX, but lived in northern Mexico until I was about 11 years old, after which I lived outside Port Isabel, TX in the Lower Rio Grande Valley and in Corpus Christi, TX. I’ve lived in Austin since 1992.

I feel photography is memory. Every great photo captures a moment in time and always elicits intense nostalgia regardless if it’s a personal memory or someone else’s. It draws you in and creates a shared history. Chris Marker’s film “La Jetée” is an extreme example of this. Not only do I feel photography is memory, but that film photography looks like memory. I don’t know if it’s because of the texture of the grain, the colors or the contrast, but the reality is I love the look and feel of film and shooting vintage cameras.

I’ve been a shutterbug for decades, but I didn’t really get serious about photography until the spring of 2014 when my mom gave me two of her old Minolta X-700 bodies and some crummy 3rd party no-name zooms from the 1970s. I had wanted to get a DSLR for over a decade, but had not had the funds to shell out for a decent one. I was impressed by the incredible resolution my cheap flatbed scanner could get from old negatives, and this inspired me to use the Minoltas. I got my first Rokkor prime, an MC Rokkor PF 55mm 1:1.7, and I fell in love. Many more Rokkor primes later and a couple of better scanners, I still shoot all my 35mm film stuff with Minolta bodies and Rokkor primes. I later got a Mamiya RB67 Pro S body that I used for high value landscapes and eventually got a Nikon D7100. I wasn’t completely happy with the D7100 until I got a used AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED. It was the most expensive lens I’d ever purchased at US$750 from KEH, but I was blown away by the difference in quality from the AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II I’d been using for the past two years. The color rendition and contrast was so much better and almost looked as good as my film stuff with very little PS editing.

I went full frame with a Nikon D750 in December 2017, and my photography hasn't been the same since. I got some inexpensive, older used glass, an AF Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D, AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D, AF Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D and an AF Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8D, and was blown away by the quality and perspective. The perspective was exactly like my beloved Minolta 35mm cameras and Rokkor glass, and the color and contrast was almost as good in the unedited RAW files. The difference in the amount of highlight and shadow detail retention compared to the D7100, as well as the fact that the D750's 24MP is much sharper than the D7100's 24MP, made it my go to camera.

These days, I find myself shooting very little film. The D750 represents most of my work since the end of 2017. I still love the look and feel of film, but the D750's speed and quality with detail resolution that exceeds Kodak Ektar in 6x7cm, as well as my growing proficiency in LR and PS to give my images what I love so much about Fujichrome RVP 50 Velvia and Kodak Ektar, has made the D750 irresistible.

I'm not giving up my RB67's or any of my Minolta's yet. I used a Minolta X-570 with my classic Rokkor glass on my most recent model shoots, and I might be falling back in love with film, at least in the studio.

You might notice my watermark and name are different on my people photos. I am also Dumuziel Photography. I'm new to people photography and I initially wanted to keep it separate from my landscape stuff, so I used a common alias of mine, Dumuziel, to mark my people photographs. I was reluctant to post my proliferating people photos here, since almost all my previous content was landscape oriented and I felt funny about posting photos of these incredible models when my few followers are expecting pretty landscapes. Nonetheless, since Flickr seems to be a less vibrant and immediate platform than Instagram, and due to the fact that Flickr is clearly more focused on photographers with it's ability to display high resolution images without censorship, after adequate consideration, I intend to relegate this account to primarily showcase higher resolution versions of my Instagram posts. I'm not currently concerned with internet fame, so I'll probably rarely add my photos to groups in the future, since it seems fairly onanistic when pursued too rigorously, and because I don't want my beautiful, lovingly captured people photos to be displayed alongside vulgar and ugly internet porn screenshots.

Lastly, downloads are enabled, but that's only because any dumb-ass who uses google can find out how download "non-downloadable" images.

Cheers,

T.