Kent Peterson unretires to go digital
Kent Peterson was done with photography in 2002. He sold his cameras, closed his studio and got a job with a bicycle company. Film photography was an old horse. But now he’s back, and going digital.
Peterson left the bicycle company after he was diagnosed with cancer. The chemotherapy left him exhausted. He then jumped right back into photography.
The Eugene Ballet, for which Peterson had shot publicity photos, was after him once more, this time to shoot photos for its 2007-08 season brochure.
“They had been pestering me for a year or so to come back and shoot some pictures for them,” he said. “But by that time I had sold everything, all my film equipment. All my lighting. I didn’t have a studio. I didn’t have any place to do this.”
Peterson laughs. “So I said, ‘Yes.’?”
Just about a year ago Peterson started over.
He bought himself a Canon 5D digital camera, which boasts extremely high resolution among the current crop of digital wonders. He found some lights. And one day when the ballet dancers were in town, he and artistic director Toni Pimble set up a makeshift photography studio at the Hult Center’s rehearsal room called The Studio.
Unconstrained by a film budget — yes, Peterson sounds a bit like he, too, has at last become a digital convert — he shot more than 1,000 photos of ballet dancers floating, flying and spinning.
The Register Guard has the inspirational story of Kent Peterson.
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