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Roy Dunn Success Interview What's in Roy's Camera Bag: |
Roy is an electronic engineer by profession, having graduated from an Australian university a long time ago. For a number of years he designed integrated circuits (IC’s) at GEC Research Laboratories, London, before entering the world of electronic design automation (EDA), creating software tools for electronic engineers. In this role he traveled the world, and moved to the U.S. (North Carolina) from the U.K. in 1996.
In 2001, he started his own business, Fotronix, Inc., developing and constructing high speed photographic flash systems. He moved to Southern California in 2004, and ran a company which consulted in many areas: high speed imaging, high speed flash, EDA, advanced technology applications, business development, and even such seemingly unrelated arenas as histology and radio-frequency identification (RFID). Recently, Roy said an official ‘Goodbye’ to his high tech career, and is now pursuing photography full time, as a photographer, teacher and consultant. He is also contributing time and effort to Cognisys Inc. – a photographic technology startup company.
Roy has been a passionate wildlife photographer for 30 years, specializing in high speed flash and macro photography. Well known for his hummingbird photography, Roy’s work has been exhibited across the U.S. He is also a very keen arachnologist, and has an extensive library of spider images.
Tom Mangelsen and Stephen Dalton are Roy’s main photographic influences, and he thanks his early mentor, Ian Lawrence for his inspiration and guidance. Wolfgang A. Mozart, Iggy Pop, Robert Calvert, Ed Kuepper, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Jimmy Page, Johnny Thunders and Blind Willie Johnson are major musical influences, while Willis Gertsch, Barrie Gilbert, and Harold ‘Doc’ Edgerton are technical influences.
Roy is at his happiest when tramping/hiking anywhere with his wife Ruth and dog Charley (a black standard poodle named after Steinbeck’s), or when on the jungle floor searching for bugs and spiders. Roy has lectured internationally on macro photography, nocturnal mammal photography, remote photography, and high speed flash photography. He is available to consult in any of these areas, and also runs popular hummingbird photography workshops from his home in Southern California. 2011 will see the expansion of his workshops to include remote photography, with both wildlife and scientific applications.
“I most enjoy making images of subjects or events that people cannot normally see in their everyday lives: From freezing hummingbirds in flight, to ballistic collisions, to macroscopic images of minute arthropods, to nocturnal mammal photography with remote infrared triggers. It is all about the challenge of creating the image – as I say to all my students, my work is about 98% preparation and fieldwork, and 2% photography, with the photography being the easy part.”
Recently, Roy has begun to delve into the world of portrait photography. He produces what he calls “Essence Portraiture” – seeing and capturing the inherent beauty that resides in every single one of us. Some of that work can be seen in the Galleries section, under Other Work or just clicking here.
For those interested, Roy is also studying for his Masters Degree in Spiritual Psychology at the University of Santa Monica.
