Submitted by ifasaadmin on Mon, 05/16/2011 - 4:41pm
Posted in
In Memoriam - 2011 - Our friend and inspiration.
Alan Barley - Former Secretary
Alan Barley
The introduction of photography was greeted by, “Nice picture, but is it art?” Since then, every new method of creating an image has been greeted with the same question. If you created something with a paint & drawing program, “Sure, it’s a nice picture, but is it art?” Digital Photography, "is that 'really' photography?" --- and using Photoshop instead of a darkroom? Fuhget about it! It has always seemed to me that the “true artist” objected because by using the computer one could do more in less time.
I had my own film & print dark room for years. It was my hobby with a goal of selling enough art & services to cover the cost of my supplies. With 35mm film, if I wanted to see what a little more contrast looked like, I could expose the negative, develop the print, wait 20 minutes for it to dry, and then I could make a judgment. Now, a change in contrast requires nudging a slider, cost nothing, and can be un-done.. Obviously the nudge is an inferior method to be shunned by true artist. Even so I was fascinated by the possibilities.
In college (1970), I created a few student videos, one which won state & regional awards. Video tape very experimental at the time, VHS & Beta had not yet been invented. In the late 70’s Lawrence KS, was a hot bed of video editing technology. I was fortunate enough to make several student friends, all of whom developed some of the core concepts later used in in almost all video editing. Some went on to create the “video toaster”. Other created different hardware. Funding came from Roy Clark Jr., and George Carey [later was famous for being Drew Carey’s brother]. People including Todd Rundgren, Herk Harvey, & the crew from PBS “Reading Rainbow”, discreetly came to Lawrence KS to use the prototypes for production and evaluation. I was a peripheral, a gopher and gaffer for most of the actual development. Around 1983, I became involved with the [then new] business technology, “Computer Originated Document Imaging”. I learned a heck of a lot about both film & computer graphics technology. I personally created 1,000’s of computer graphics, and oversaw the computerized printing of millions of pages of business reports. My assignment was to print business reports, graphs, charts. Print to microfilm or to CD disks – create computer code to print cleaner, faster, process data from more/different types of computers. And not one damn artistic/creative step did I do! To limit my frustration, I enlarged my darkroom & photographic services, and became a volunteer camera operator, producer, director, etc with Kansas City Public Access Television. The culmination of 20 yrs working in the Computer Originated Microfilm., I wrote the 3rd party user/computer-interface for controlling the Lockheed/Lear/Datagraphix microfilm camera.
With that, I said the heck with it, “I’ll move to Tucson and sink or swim with the thriving film and video industry out there”. I have some acting under my belt, and some public speaking. Once, in front of a live audience of 4,000, I got to introduce the speaker who introduced Art Linkletter! My move to Tucson was in 1994 [See Alan Williams biography, regarding that period in film-Tucson]
Since then I have served as a paid and non-paid camera operator, actor, graphics generator and editor. None of these were not Union wages & I can keep all that income in a sock under my bed. I have provided serious funding for several projects. Most of which I did ok with, two I’m still hoping for the investment to break even.
I have been a member of AIVF / IFASA almost since the day I arrived. And have always enjoyed my duties as an office of the board. I am pleased to work with IFASA members and fully expect that together we will revitalize the film industry in Tucson.