Expose Me! Charles Wickam
Introducing Charles Wickam. A self described automotive gear head and photographer, Charles loves to combine his two passions into one. All eyes are on you Charles Wickam!
A little bout myself, I started out taking photo classes in high school, not by choice, I wanted to be in a film class and there were too many students in the class so going by alphabetical order by last name ….. yea I got the boot and was placed in Photo 01. In that class I learned the basics and I guess caught the bug, I ended up taking photo for 3 of my 4 years in high school and even won a scholastic photo contest. I took pictures on and off mostly using point and shoot cameras and SLRs for the next 20 years and even saw some of my photos show up in print magazines helping out with show coverage and tech articles in automotive based publications.
{When did you decide to become a photographer?}
Feb 2010 my wife bought me a Nikon DSLR after seeing some old pics I took and immediately started taking pics at every car show I went to. Being an automotive gear head I have a HUGE collection of automotive magazines and always look at the pics and see who took they and see and study how they took those pics. people like Steve Reyes, John Jackson are two of my favorites and other photographers work I also follow on-line such as Roger Richards and Mark Rebilas.
{How would you describe your photo style?}
I don’t know what kind of style I have, I take pics of what I like and try to separate myself from other photographers so people who see my work know who did it, its hard to describe, I like to call what I do “action candid”. I don’t like doing staged portrait type stuff but I do like those kind of pics. I just like capturing that instant moment freezing it in time.
{Where would you like to see your talents take you?}
Where I want to go with my photography is being able to travel around the country going to car shows anywhere and everywhere and I would also like to take baseball pics. I think that’s why I like Mark Rebilas work so much. The guy shoots drag racing, baseball and can go out in the desert and capture a lightning storm. He is the all round kind of photographer I want to be.
{Tell us how you do it?}
So I work my full time job as a Heavy Machinery Mechanic for the local Caterpillar dealer. I have my wife and 2 daughters who support me in what I do and help me out critiquing my photos but I try to do the best that I can with what I got which is just my D70, D3000, 24-85 2.8 nikkor lens and a 70-200 2.8 sigma lens and a trusty Vivatar 383 flash, nothing fancy, heck I don’t even have Photoshop, I just use the picture editor on Microsoft Picture Editor to adjust some light settings – LOL, yea I’m bare bones.
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