The above background image was shot downtown Las Vegas on Fremont Street on well expired 35mm film with the Olympus XA compact camera.
Thank you for taking the time to dive a little deeper and find out a little bit more about me. And how I got to Las Vegas and Baja.
June 2020 to 2022 I had a gallery in the Arts Factory in the Arts District downtown Las Vegas. Being there during the height of the pandemic and the shut down was both a blessing and a curse. Blessing because I have shots that I will never (hopefully) be able to take again and curse because of the loss of foot traffic. There is a creative energy there in the Arts District that is electric and pervasive and I'm glad to have been in the center of that for those two years. And those past few years spent in the Las Vegas Valley have increased the depth and breadth of my images and I'd like to believe that I have been consistently honing my craft.
Baja started as a getaway to surf and photography was to take a back seat but that has turned out not to be the case. Mexico's beauty and people have ensnared me and will be a place I consistently return to to photograph.
So how did it start? With a Pony 135 35mm film camera in the 70's and images commiserate with being shot by a ten year old with almost no experience. In college I took a few photography classes but my major was Interior Architecture and Design. Après college I took my 35 out occasionally but it wasn't until about 2017 that I decided that being an artist was what I really wanted/needed to do as a full-time occupation. I had added the Lumix GX8 with Leica glass to the two 35's two years earlier and around that same time I picked up the currently nonfunctional Yashica-Mat. I have a number of nice images captured with that beautiful camera and will get looked at professionally eventually.
Most recently, when not shooting with the Lumix GX8 I have been shooting my Bronica GS1 and more recently acquired Rolleicord - both medium format cameras give me images that send me over the moon! And more practically they, along with the Lumix give me the ability to print images clearly to a least 40" x 50". So to state the obvious, I shoot both digital and analog (film). And speaking of film I take instant print pictures too both Polaroid and Fuji Instax.
Concluding, I like to express my creative bent through the use of a camera and then share those captured moments with others, generally with photographic prints (small and large).
John Vail
Artist
