This is the page with more information about me. For my main about page, please click the Bio link in the menu.
I started shooting when I was young, but I never really became a photographer. Even now I feel like I'm not really a photographer . . . not yet. Now I am getting old, yet I still shoot from time to time. Sometimes I shoot a lot in a short period of time. In one year I might shoot just a few thousand photos, and in another I might shoot a few tens of thousands of photos.
Lately I have realized that my collection of photos has grown quite large. I'm not talking about what is visible through the ALL link in the GALLERIES drop-down here on this website. That's only a smidgen of the photos I've shot. Most of my photos are sunrises and models. I have literally thousands of good sunrise photos (over 8,000 in just one Aperture library I was looking at a minute ago). Over the last few years I photographed hundreds of models - more than 1,000 photos each with most of them. That means I actually have hundreds of thousands of portraits (not all good though, of course). I have more cameras than ever now too.
Today I shoot primarily with Sigma cameras. I have other cameras too (a couple of Sony cameras with some Minolta lenses, a Nikon D810, a couple of old Nikons, including an F3hp film camera with a 28mm f2 AIS lens, an old, broken Sigma, two old, broken Canons . . . I guess I shot too many photos with them). I sometimes use my large format film camera, and I have an old Minolta 35mm film camera too . . . yet to be used (but I have a few rolls of film for it, which I hope to shoot over the next few months).
My current plan is to buy a couple more lenses for the Fuji GFX100 medium format 100 MP digital camera that I got a few months ago. As of August 2024 my collection of Sigma Art lenses for my Sigma camera, which has a Foveon sensor, has grown quite a bit, and I still plan to get an 8x10 large format field camera, which requires very expensive sheets of film. The 8x10 will become my primary landscape camera one day, hopefully, while the Sigma has become my primary digital camera these days. I may sell some of my other stuff to fund the purchase of an extra lens or two for the 8x10. Eventually I may end up using my Fuji GFX100 as my primary digital camera. The Fuji will have the advantage in situations where I need to use high ISO settings, such as when shooting wide-field starscapes (i.e. the Milkyway galaxy) and indoor action photos at events (i.e. stage performances), and of course, when I want to shoot video. (The Sigma cameras don't do video, and the 8x10 is a one frame film camera, which has to be loaded with another big sheet of film after each shot.) So why Sigma cameras you might ask . . .
Sigma cameras have Foveon sensors, and I believe the Foveon sensor is the best sensor for low-ISO photography, which is the bulk of what I shoot.
I never dreamed of having so many cameras, and now I'm starting to wonder why I need so many lenses.
Photography equipment is not limited to cameras and lenses though, of course. I have tripods, lights, and light stands too, among other things. Most of my lights are mono-lights. I have Alien Bee 400 and 800 lights, as well as a couple of really powerful White Lightning studio strobes. I have soft boxes and umbrellas, but I have never owned a beauty dish. I've worked with many beauty dishes, but never felt the need to have one of my own. These days I shoot mostly with natural and available light, but I shot an award-winning swimwear photo using a strobe with a reflector, and a circular gold bounce, held by a reflector stand, so I sometimes wonder if I should shoot with strobes more often.
I have other websites too. Here they are:
http://www.fairiesoftheworld.com
So what about me you might ask? Who is Scott Kennelly?
It's difficult for me to describe myself. I can tell you about my physical characteristics, like my weight (about 145 lbs.) and height (5'4"), which is shorter than most of the models I shoot, or I can tell you about my race (northern European - Caucasian - born in Australia though). I can tell you I have really long hair (making many of my models jealous), and I never cut it. (I let God do that for me.) I'm in reasonably good shape, because I have been a skater and a bicyclist for so many years of my life. I hike around a bit too, as you can see by the photo above. Ultimately you would probably prefer to learn about my personality though, right?
I'm a person of dualities. I can work hard and be very detailed, but I can also be lazy and a slob. I am intelligent sometimes, but I think I come across as pretty dumb sometimes. I've been told by people that I'm tough, which is a characteristic I may have learned or inherited from my dad, a man who lived to 93, a World War II veteran, who shot and killed many enemy soldiers in that war. Since then he did a myriad of things, and my own measly existence really doesn't compare. (He continued to make plans for future ventures, and pushed to make things happen even into his nineties.)
I'm not always serious. I like humor, and I like to laugh. I have a pretty laid-back attitude, rarely stressed about anything. I have plenty of self-confidence, but that's not always a good thing. In fact, I think it might make me seem arrogant sometimes, which I just might be, without meaning to be. I try not to be judgmental, and I try to be pretty open-minded. I believe we can always learn new things, even when we get old. (My dad learned how to use an iPhone after he turned 80.) My sense of humor can be complex, and it's a bit dry sometimes, I think. For some reason my humor seems to go right past most people. I guess they don't "get" it, or it's just so corny they don't want to acknowledge it. I'm really not sure which it is.
I have some experience in a variety of industries. Without making this into a resumé, I can tell you that I'm not just into photography, but also I'm a part-time webmaster and website developer, and in the past I've been a stock man, a warehouse laborer, a truck driver, an auto mechanic, a salesman, and a customer service manager. I've never flown a plane or helicopter, but I've been a bulldozer operator, dredge operator, and piloted a few different boats. I know how to sail, and I have sailed more than one or two different sailboats, though I am still just a beginner. Normally I ride a bicycle, because I don't want to get fat, and I like the feeling of riding my bike. If I have to go far I take my bike on a bus or train, but not always. A few years ago I rode all the way to Asheville, North Carolina from south Florida (about 900 miles). It took a few weeks, because I was only riding about 30 to 40 miles per day. I camped by the side of the road each night in a tent, which I carried on a rack on my bike, along with my sleeping bag and an air mattress.
Walking Up A DuneWalking up the dunes at the Great Colorado Sand Dunes National Monument - Credit goes to my friend Alonzo Santiago, who shot this photo of me.
I like to bike, hike, snow ski, and dive (snorkeling and scuba diving). I love to watch adventures, like cowboy and action movies, fantasies like The Hobbit, movies about Vikings and Roman times, and sci-fi movies and TV shows (i.e. Stargate SG1). I'm heavily into a clean future, though I'm not convinced that humans have much to do with global warming . . . if global warming is really happening. (I've done a little research, and some places seem to be cooling, rather than warming. If you're curious how I can think this way, do a little research into the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age that followed it - caused by humans? . . . probably not - and I don't buy the story that humans are causing the current warming trend, which has happened mostly since about 1975, even though there was an industrial revolution from 1760 to 1840, when humans were burning wood and coal like crazy, in order to power steam engines to push river boats, ships, and trains, as well as for heating factories - and then there were the two World wars in the first half of the twentieth century, during which massive quantities of cal and other fossil fuels were not only burned to make ships, trains, guns, and all sorts of other things, but to power ships, trains, tanks, trucks, etc. - and this was followed by a boom in automotive production and use in the 1950's and 1960's . . . all happening in unison with a general cooling of the weather from the late nineteenth century to second half of the twentieth century . . . but somehow humans are the cause of the weather warming . . . not back then, because the weather wasn't warming, but all-of-a-sudden the warming over the past fifty years is caused by human activities . . . supposedly, and take a look at this from NASA: "From the start of satellite observations in 1979 to 2014, total Antarctic sea ice increased by about 1 percent per decade." - https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/sea-ice-antarctic and this: YouTube video.)
I'm a conservative with liberal ideas. I like organic food, and the idea of plastic food and drink containers bothers me. I can taste that plastic way too often, and that can't be good. I think gun control is being able to hit your target, but I think the U.S. government should provide free hospitals for everyone in the U.S, which I believe would save enough money on Medicaid and Medicare to pay for those hospitals. (The U.S. spends over $800 billion per year on Medicare and Medicaid. Just half of that could pay to build and run thousands of hospitals.) It's not that I'm a socialist, but I see all sorts of other countries with free medical care for the citizens and visitors in those countries (advanced, modern countries). If they can afford it, then why can't the U.S.A? I mean the U.S. is the wealthiest country on Earth, by far, yet we can't afford to save money on our Medicare and Medicaid in order to provide free health care to every person in this country who needs health care, because they had an accident, got a disease, or ended up with some sort of misfortune that caused them to have a medical issue? It just doesn't make sense to me. If Japan can do it . . . and if Canada (one of our closest neighbors) can do it . . . and France can do it, and Italy can do it, and China can do it, and Chile can do it, etc. etc. then we here in the U.S. can do it too. I don't mean that private medicine should be purchased or made public by decree. I think private medicine has value, but I think that just like our public and private schools operate in every city in America, public and private hospitals could operate in every city in America too.
I think we should all be driving electric cars (not by decree, but because they're just a better idea - I think it's coming), and Elon Musk is my hero, not only because of Tesla, but because he's doing what others can't or won't in order to save life from Earth (and as he puts it . . . the light of consciousness), by colonizing Mars and really taking us to the stars. His electric cars (and let me say this in an obvious way . . . Tesla Motors would not have survived if it was not for Elon, and we would not have an electric car revolution happening, if it were not for him saving Tesla) pollute less, give us lung cancer less, and provide us with a way to drive quickly and safely in quiet serenity. (I know people who have Tesla Model S cars, and they all absolutely love their Teslas.) Yes, I plan to buy a Tesla . . . and I plan to get an Optimus robot too . . . and teach it all sorts of things (with the hope that I will be able to sell that "programming" on a network of some sort, to help others have "upgraded" Optimus robots, so life can be better for other people, because of what I do with my Optimus robot.
So why electric cars? They're cleaner, quieter, and safer (and they CAN be faster . . . and I like fast cars - I used to work as a mechanic on Porsches for a living back around the turn of the century). The air pollution caused by today's gas burning cars is mostly in the cities, right? Where do most people breathe?
Maybe you wanted to learn more about my photography. Well, a few years ago I went to Chile to photograph the total eclipse of 2019. A couple of years before that I photographed the total eclipse of 2017 in South Carolina. I planned to shoot the total eclipse of 2024 from Texas, but I never made it. In 2021 I traveled across the U.S, and ended up in Arizona. I left Florida to landscapes mostly, and I have traveled to North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, several other places too, in order to shoot some autumn scenery. In the future I plan to sail around the World, photographing dozens of islands and beaches from the ocean, and I hope to take a couple of models with me to help me create fairy photos around the globe. For more info. I think what I've written in the Sigma Camera Talk forum at DPreview will help you understand me and my photography a bit better. Here's my profile there: https://www.dpreview.com/members/1973718589/overview
You can learn more about me by looking through my Facebook profile here: https://www.facebook.com/scottkennelly (Yes, I used to be on Instagram too, but I guess they didn't want me there, because they deleted my account for no reason - I won't open another account there, because I'm not a glutton for punishment, and if a company kicks me out of their business for no reason, there's no way I'm going to give them my business again. If you abuse me I will not treat you kindly. I have a profile on Twitter . . . X . . . here: https://www.x.com/ffphotos )
