David Noelte

* How did it all start for you?
I started shooting at a very young age. Maybe 7 or 8. Back then I used a cheap film Kodak Instamatic camera. The photos I took then were not serious and were more snapshots. When I was 15 my parents bought me my first SLR, a Sigma, in conjunction with a trip where I rode my bicycle across America. After this trip I also took my first and only photography class, a summer course at Glendale Community College. Here I was introduced for the first time to the darkroom and it was really at that time that I started taking a strong interest in photography. I later edited my high school yearbook, college yearbook and was editor-in-chief of my college newspaper. All of these positions gave me regular access to a darkroom where I continued working with film and producing my own photography. I bought my first digital camera, a Sony Mavica that you actually put floppy disks into in 2000. I’ve been working with digital photography ever since.

* What do you want to tell with your photography?
My photos are meant to corroborate a life passion that I have for integrating photography into life on a daily basis. To this end the camera becomes an extension of my person — like a camera built into your eye. When I’m not looking through the viewfinder I’m constantly framing through my eyes everywhere I go. Beauty is all around us and I want to show people that even everyday mundane things can be reconfigured creatively to represent something interesting or beautiful. I’m also very interested in art and anything and everything that has to do with the creative process. I also see myself as a documentarian and hope that with age my photos will represent well the various times in which I’ve lived. I work on various projects more specifically designed to tell stories, like my $2 portraits project where I pay anyone who asks me for $2 in exchange for their portraits. But mostly my photography is not about stories per se. it’s more a rush of a river of images that loosely document my life and what is going on around me on any given day at any given time.

* What are your tools?
At present I have 4 cameras. Three of them I rarely use (a Nikon Coolpix point and shoot, a Canon EOS 10D, and an iPhone). My main everyday tool is the Canon 5D. I also carry with me daily 5 prime lenses (all Canon): a 135mm f/2 (my favorite), an EF100 f/2.8 macro, a 24mm f/1.4, a 14mm f/2.8 and a 50mm f/1.2. I have a 70-200 f/4 zoom that I rarely use as well as a 1.4 extender. I’ve got 2 tripods, a Slik and a Manfrotto. I also have a Canon speedlite flash.
I process my photos on a MacBook Pro using Adobe Lightroom 2.0 and Photoshop CS3. I geotag my photos with Geotagger on the Mac. I store my photo archives on Drobos.

* What is your inspiration?
My inspiration comes from all over the place. Much of my inspiration comes simply from observing the world around me and seeing ways that I can frame photographs. Much of my inspiration though also comes from other photographers. I look at photos on Flickr and Zooomr every single day and seeing what others are doing there can be tremendously inspiring. I’m also very much inspired by many of the fine art photographers working today and from the past.

* What are your preferred Themes?
Right now I’m spending a lot of time looking at art. Paintings, sculptures, both street art and art in museums — discovering what art is and why certain art is valued and created. I’m also working on ways to show the present state of American Culture. I have a set called “So This is America” where I’m documenting much of the advertising that is presented to us in barrage like fashion almost daily. I’m working on portraits. I’m working on sets of images of neon and cemeteries and graffiti and mannequins. Actually I’ve got over 500 sets now on Flickr. My themes are less concentrated and I have several different themes and subject matter running through my photography at any given time.

* Where do you want to be in 2 years?
Right now I’m in the earliest stages of what I want to accomplish. The next 10 years will largely be dedicated to continuing to capture imagery. I have longer term plans for shows, books and presenting my work in various large scale installations 10, 20 years down the road. I’d imagine in 2 years my photography would look very similar to what it looks like today, just that I’ll have a lot more images shot, presented, arranged, published and collected.

* Current Projects you are working on?
Everyday I shoot is part of a bigger life project of amassing the collection of imagery that I’m amassing, so that above all is the overriding and single most important project. The one million published photos before I die project is the most important and most relevant. I’m very early in that project and have a terribly long way to go. That said, there are smaller individual projects I’m working on in conjunction with this. I’ve got 7 sub-projects I’m working on at present.

Neon Days and Neon Nights, a project where I’m shooting neon. I started seriously shooting neon after learning how much of it had been destroyed in the Vancouver area and realizing how quickly so much of the neon around us is disappearing. Neon disappears for many reasons — businesses supporting the neon frequently fail, it’s composition as glass is fragile and subject to vandalism and accidental death. I want to collect as much neon as possible. At present I probably have a few thousand photographs of neon.

Abstraction is a project where I’m learning to let the camera take a more figurative view of the world based less in realism and more in reconstruction. Lately I’ve been working with a lot of ways to use alternative focusing techniques and blur with this project.

$2 Portraits is a portrait project that I’m working on where I offer $2 to anyone who asks me for money in exchange for their portrait. The primary purpose of this project is to increase the human interaction between me and other human beings. I try to spend a few minutes talking to those who ask me for money and try to learn a little bit about their situation.

So This is America is a project I’m working on documenting marketing, advertising and in some cases contemporary art in America.

Beautiful Plastic People is a project I’m working on documenting mannequins and especially how they are built and arranged as it speaks to the sexualization of marketing and commerce.

The World Belongs to the Living is a project I’m working on documenting cemeteries. I think about death a lot and feel that a healthy focus on death can better help us recognize the importance of living.

And finally I’m working on a project documenting graffiti, stencil, murals, posters, stickers and other various street art.

* analog or digital
Definitely digital. I can’t imagine ever going back. I simply don’t have the time to work with analog given the scope and quantity of what I am trying to produce.

* post-processing or unprocessed
I’m an image whore and believe that almost any image can be improved with post processing. So much of the creative process takes place in the digital darkroom, just like so much of the creative process of the greats took place in the darkrooms of the past.

* Who or What would you like to Photograph in future?
There are so many cities that I’ve yet to photograph that I’d like to photograph. When my kids are out of the house and off to college (hopefully) I am going to walk across America with my camera. I’m going to shoot every day and especially spend time focusing on portraits of Americans, the people of America. This is the most important thing I’d like to shoot in the future. Other than this I want to continue shooting much of what I’ve already been shooting just in as many different places as possible.

* Which Photographers do you like or adore?
Oh there are so, so, so many photographers that I adore that I hesitate to even begin to answer that knowing that for every one name I give that there are a hundred that I’m leaving out.

That said many of my favorites are a mixture of current Flickr/Zooomr type photographers as well as many more professional fine art photographers.

Probably the photographer that inspires me more than any other is Lee Friedlander. Mostly due to the quantity and consistency in the quality of his output.

Other photographers that I like would include Aqui-Ali, Bernie DeChant, Merkley, Andy Warhol, Troy Paiva, Richard Prince, William Eggleston, Sweet Distin, torbakhopper, Extra Super Cutie, Glen Friedman, Stephen Shore, Mary Ellen Mark, Ar’alani, Kelly Castro, Drumond Buckley, Andreas Gursky, Walker Evans, W. Eugene Smith, Gary Winograd, Angelo Rizzuto, Gregory Crewdson, Edward Curtis, Bruce Gliden, Richard Misrach, Jeremy Brooks, Ron Dioro, Mike Garlington, pfeyh, Andrew Moore, Diane Arbus, Cole Rise, Brian Auer, immaculatious, Raoul Pop, Smoothdude, Snailbooty, I could literally go on and on for hours. I’m also especially fond of many of the photo realist painters, Richard Estes, Robert Bechtle, Chuck Close, Ralph Goings, Don Eddy, folks like that. Although not a photographer per se, Banksy is also a huge inspiration.

* When did you sale your first photo?
The first photo I ever sold was a photo of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland for a television commercial for Choice Hotels. I think I sold it in 2005.

* What is your favorite Place or Landscape to travel for taking photos?
Probably New York City.

* Anything I forgot to mention?
My own personal mantra is that the best photographs in the world have yet to be taken. This mantra is not to dismiss the great work of so many great photographers from the past and present, but it’s meant to inspire hope that the road and future of photography is long and the tools are getting better and better. New artists will continue to emerge and finding these new artists remains exciting and inspiring.