honorable mention
Mark Dornfeld united states
Photo © Mark Dornfeld
title
Light Leak
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about the photographer
I grew up in the suburbs of NY city and had a great interest in theatre set and lighting design. I was always the one manning the camera on family occasions. I was given a Nikkormat for my 17th birthday and immediately put up a small darkroom. But my other interests were still calling. I began college and was immediately attracted to filmmaking. In 1974 I moved to Los Angeles to attend California Institute of the Arts film school. I immersed in my film studies but was always shooting stills. In 1977 Star Wars was released and every studio was screaming for VFX movies. I had exactly the skill set necessary and became an artisan working film to film. In 1991 I went to work for Disney studios. We were still photochemical in those days and I was supervising film compositing. Prepping photo elements to move onto the optical printers. Every thing from the stage, animation cameras, rotoscoped mattes all landed on us for compositing and color control. In 1982 I left Disney and started my own visual effects company. Custom Film Effects making the change to digital technologies along the way as the company grew. After 16 years of operation I had enough. I had 35 years in the cinematographers union, it was time to take the bennies and run. I now have the time to review and catalogue thousands of both film and digital exposures. A daunting task. I am also making new work all the time and always looking to get eyes on my work.back to gallery
