Cape
Breton Island (Canada) is known as one of the most beautiful islands in
the world and Warren Gordon, MPA photographs it all. Visit any
bookstore/tourist shop on the island and you’ll see his work. He has
sold over 200,000 hard cover coffee table photo books about his island and tons of picturesque calendars.
For 30 years he has operated a full service studio. Warren first heard
about Virtual Backgrounds some years ago, thought it was a great idea,
but didn’t acquire a system because he heard that some photographers
had trouble.
In April 2005, Warren attended the Professional Photographers of Canada
(PPOC) National Convention in Calgary and watched Trevon Baker get
great results with a Scene Machine even though he was working in a very
small trade show booth. He also attended Joseph and Louise Simone’s
PPOC presentation and decided the time had come for him to acquire a
system. He started using the system in January 2006.
Warren reports, “I was expecting to have to spend at least several days
learning to use it, but I was very pleasantly surprised that my very
first exposures were salable. I didn’t think it would be so easy, and I
didn’t expect the impressive results I was getting.” From that point
on, he has continued to use the system for every studio photograph he
captures.
“I already had a collection of backgrounds on a motorized roller
system. I have a lot of different canvas backgrounds, muslins, and even
imitation book case backgrounds. But now, I am putting these old
backgrounds up for sale because I don’t need them anymore.” However,
because some customers want exactly the same backgrounds they had in
photographs taken years earlier, Warren is photographing his old
backgrounds and turning them into background slides before he sells
them.
Warren explains, “Sometimes a family has an array of photographs on the
wall of each child’s graduation and they all have the same background.
So now, I will just project the old background along with new ones that
I will also use, but I won’t have all those different backgrounds
cluttering up my studio.”
Warren has been using a spare D70 camera on the system but now is going
to permanently mount a new D200. Warren’s wife, Katheryn was the
featured speaker for the 2006 PPOC Halifax convention in May. Katheryn,
PPOC Atlantic Photographer of the Year ’04 & ’05, is also an
accomplished artist and will be creating a variety of art backgrounds
for use with the Scene Machine.