PHOTOGRAPHER - Tom Chambers

Tom Chambers was born on a farm in the religiously conservative area of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After high school he joined the Navy and spent a year on a patrol boat base in Vietnam which profoundly affected his outlook on life. Chambers earned a BFA from the Ringling School of Art and Design. His work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States. He has received numerous awards and honors for his work including a 2000-2001 Fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and a 2005-2006 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts fellowship.

Tom on his work:

As an artist I have created photo montages to reveal a personal vision about the nature of children, animals, and their interactions. These images illustrate the fleeting moods that can’t be captured by a traditional camera or seen by the naked eye.

I initially sketch out a concept or idea I have for an image. I photograph each piece of the image using a me-
dium format film camera, generally a Mamiya Pro TL or a Fuji Rangefinder. I am careful to make sure the light
intensity and direction are similar in each of these shots.

This process may take a month depending on how quickly I am able to get all the shots and sort through
them picking the ones which work best together. “Pieces” of the final image may include the landscape or
background, often shot in sections, as well as the sky, a human figure, an animal, or another object. The processed film is scanned at a high resolution, approximately 80 megabytes per frame. Then, I use Photoshop
software with a Macintosh computer to combine each “piece”, thus creating the final image. Lastly, the image
is printed with an Epson printer using archival inks and paper.