Questions you may (or may not) want the answers to . . .
Q. Who and where are you?
A. My name is Rod Hampton and I live and work in northern Delaware.
Q. How long have you been doing photography?
A. I've been at it in rather desultory fashion for most of my life and as a serious life re-commitment since Sept. '06.
Q. Have you ever done photography, professionally?
A. Yes, I was a medical photographer all through the '80s and early '90s, but have never worked in the travel/editorial field, so this is something entirely new for me.
Q. And just what have you been doing since the mid-90s?
A. Web development, mainly. I migrated to that when I co-founded Britannia.com, a history and travel site devoted to Great Britain, in 1996. My responsibility was development of the site's "British History" content which has won numerous awards over the years and still ranks #1 or #2 on Google (depending on the day).
Q. Are you still involved with Britannia?
A. Yes, but my main interest has shifted back to this side of the pond.
Q. What are your plans for this website?
A. Plans. Schmans. Nothing so formal as an actual plan, but here're my intentions: the first few entries on the 'About' page on my blog will give you some history and the philosphical underpinnings for the site. As far as the nuts and bolts are concerned, I will use these pages to document my travels in narrative form and in photographs. A few of the early trips (i.e. before "SightLines" came into existence, conceptually, last year) will be re-constructed long after the fact from notes, photos and memory. All trip accounts, from now on, will be written or dictated partially on the road and/or soon upon my return.
Q. So, the photography part of the website will just be the photos we see, right? You're not doing equipment reviews or articles or anything like that?
A. No, there are plenty of people doing that, already, and testing lens resolutions in a laboratory isn't my thing, anyway. I'm not an equipment junkie and I don't get a lot of pleasure from tinkering with lights and meters and all that. What's interesting to me about photography are the images I get when I click the shutter button. The digital aspect of photography interests me, as well. Like almost everyone else, I've spent most of my life as a non-digital photographer. Everywhere I went, I had to pack up a ton (literally - since everything was made of iron, in those days) of stuff and make sure I had enough film, had to worry about x-rays at airports, had to make sure I kept temperatures moderate so the professional films didn't shift colors, etc. All that has changed, but there are new problems - like managing chargers and storing images. Also, as I get older, I find I want to travel as light as I can, but not sacrifice image quality, so I'm always on the lookout for whatever gets me closer to that goal. So, I'll be writing about those aspects of photography, mostly in "Notes from the Road", in addition to the travel narratives.
Q. How frequently will you update the site?
A. Can't say for sure, but something new should be added at least weekly. Trip narratives will naturally be spread out a bit more, but I hope to do several major expeditions per year, with many new places visited (and reported upon) each time.
Q. Will there be a geographic focus to the site?
A. At first, the site content might appear to be western US-oriented, but over time, you'll see the coverage broaden and balance out a bit.
Q. Do you travel alone?
A. Never developed the ability to do that. No, when I travel, I want someone to share the experience with and that someone is usually my wife and sometimes, when I find one available, it will be a photographer friend.
Q. What will your approach be to style and subject matter?
A. For that, you will have to read the "About the Site" page
Q. Do you consider yourself environmentally aware / concerned / responsible?
A. Yes, and becoming more so every day, but not to the point of being environmentally fixated / panicked / irresponsible. Like most photographers, I support any normal and reasonable effort to protect and preserve areas of natural beauty and environmental importance. But, I think that normal, reasonable environmental concerns have been inflamed to ludicrous extremes by celebrity enviro-political shakedown artists abetted by their co-religionists in the mainstream media and supported by pseudo-science that couldn't pass muster in Mrs. Klingelman's 6th grade class.
Q. Do you consider yourself a fine artist?
A. Oh yes, a very fine artist, indeed.
Q. Stop it, that's not what I meant and you know it. Let me put it another way - are you a practitioner of the form of expression known as fine art photography?
A. I'm not trying to be evasive, but I'm really not into labels. I travel, am reasonably competent with a camera, can write a semi-coherent sentence and, through the miracle of the internet, can share what I see with you.
Q. What if I buy a print and it fades (not cigarette burns, not red wine stains, not tire tracks - fades) sometime soon after I buy it?
A. It probably won't, but if it does, return it and I'll gladly make another one for you.
Q. What if a print is damaged in shipment?
A. First, I'll gladly replace the damaged print with a new one and then our lawyers will tie up the shipping company in litigation for years.
Q. What if I need a larger print?
A. That's not a problem, but it will take a bit longer, since we have to outsource the printing. Just EMAIL us with your requirements.
Q. Will your photographs be worth more when you're dead and gone?
A. I wouldn't count on it . . . but, then, who can say for sure? Buy now!
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