Biography of Richard Asarisi
So just who is this guy?
My name is Richard Asarisi and I have been interested in photography since I was 15. The first camera I had was a hand me down 35mm Mamiya from my Uncle. From there I was a photographer for the year book my senior year, where alot of my B&W photos, made it to print. My next upgrade in equipment didn't come until I bought a Canon AE1 program with many lenses and accessories. I did some semi-pro work when I was 18 for a local pageant contest. I must admit that the AE1 was a decent piece of equipment for its time. As I got a little older I invested in a Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm, this lens went with me to Hawaii in 1987 and I have many rolls of film that have fantastic pics! To this day people marvel at some of those shots.
Around January of 1999 I made plans to go back to Hawaii, and decided to upgrade my equipment before going. I chose a Nikon N70 for the job with a 35-135mm lens. It served me well and you can see some of my photos from that trip on this website. My wife used a Nikon point and shoot that I had bought her about 6 or 7 years ago, and believe it or not she actually had many pics that were as good as and if not better then mine. I wasn't really sure why they were better, so I started an investigation to see why, I first suspected that the filter I had on my 135mm lens (an L37c) might be the problem, so I removed it and changed to a standard skylight 1A. Yes it made some difference but not enough to satisfy me. From that point on I had tried lots of experiments but never really determined that I could nail the exact cause of the difference. Things were going quite well for me at that point, I work as the Chief Technology Officer for a Sun Reseller. And yes, my website is running on a Sun platform, with Apache and Iplanet software. With my promotion and $ being available I decide not to play with the problem anymore, but instead to replace it. So I bought an F100 and made some test shots to see where my base line was.
By that time I had also bought my wife an upgrade to a Pronea S, which I must say she loves. I too was really impressed with the APS system. So much so that I picked up a Pronea 6i to play with on and off. Now I must admit that the Pronea S can take some shots that blew my F100 away, I wasn't happy about that so I thought I would replace the glass (135mm) with a new lens, I opted for a Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-S. This is an AWESOME lens! Fast and accurate! I put a B&W filter on it since I could never determine if the Nikon filter had an affect on the images. I have shot dozens and dozens of rolls of film with this new combination (F100 and the AF-s). I am always amazed at the quality of the shots. You can see some of them here on my web page.
As time went on I quickly realized that I had actually made a transition to finer quality work and I wanted to get my better stuff on the web for people to see. This led me to the Nikon LS-2000 film scanner. This is another awesome piece of equipment! Although I had read many things about bad images from it under Windows and the bad report of the Nikon software I gave it all a go under Windows 2000 on my laptop running off a pcmcia card. It works like a charm and you can check the images for yourself here on my website.
Although I love all the parts of my system now, it takes many hours to get the images in to the system and re-size them in Photoshop, then post them to the website. And at present there is not many here, but more will follow.
Around March or April of 2000 I thought that I would invest in a Nikon D1, this is my first real foray into the digital world. However there are a lot of things I really like about the D1. One being I can use all my lenses, two the photo secretary piece is built in and third I already know tons of stuff about computers and imagining. So the D1 is a logical progression.
I bought my wife a Nikon Coolpix 990 for Christmas and she was a little hesitant at first, but now she loves it and turns out great stuff with it. In August of 2001 I decide that the lure of the D1X was to great to let slip by. So I sold my D1 on Ebay, and got a D1X. There was still a bit of a learning curve with this upgrade, but now I can crank out images that are just awesome.
I've done some studying of PhotoShop with Deke McClelland's DVD study course, and I have learned a tremendous amount. In September of 2002 I added an Epson 7600 to use to produce every thing from 11x17's up to 24x36. I have a Sony DPP-SV55 Dye Sub printer that I use for all my 4x6 prints. It does a fantastic job. I recently added a Sony UP-D70AP Dye Sub printer that I use for 8x10 prints. I just can't say enough about the quality of these prints.
As far as computer and hook-ups and things of that nature go I can usually be of some help in providing answers. If you want to know specifics about any of the equipment I use let me know and I will provide you info on it. I would like to be a help to you that browse my website and enjoy the work here.
Thanks For Your Time
And ENJOY!
This is a picture of me and my daughter Natalie, this was taken on the Southford falls hike in May of 2000. It was taken by my wife with the Pronea S and I scanned the APS negative in with the LS-2000 film scanner. Then resized in PhotoShop.
