I decided to call this site “The Occasional Eye” because I photograph… occasionally. Although early on I aspired to make my living as a photographer, my professional career took a different but also very cool creative direction as a professional modelmaker.

Still, photography has always been something I’ve been passionate about, and so I continued making my images in parallel to my more 3D oriented professional activities… occasionally. There was a period of many years when I hardly made any at all, which I regret, but now having semi-retired, I have dived back in.

In the early to mid-70’s when I was studying at Berkeley, I was very lucky to have been able to take some photo classes from William (Bill) Garnett. One of the great masters of aerial photography, he was also a great teacher. His classical approach instilled in us the notion of quality and craftsmanship of our images – which I still consider of primary importance in my work. It was through his classes that I fell in love with photography and have been ever since.

I’m most often found roaming around the urban environments that we live in, searching for visually interesting artifacts, situations, and scenes.  My images are almost always related to human activity in some way - even if actual humans don’t figure in many of them.  The documentary aspect - that “momentary detail frozen in time and space” - is one of the essential elements in my work.  But, being admittedly somewhat “old-school”, composition, lighting and occasionally color - are equally important.  When all these elements miraculously coalesce simultaneously in an image, that is my joy.

 

What follows is a small selection of my favorite ‘occasional’ subjects...  :-)

-- Mitch Heynick