NICHE: A WEEKLY PEEK AT AN EMERGING ARTIST
Renee Maxwell

Behind the glass frame is a portrait of three stacked targets in front of a backdrop of thick red and white stripes wrapped in a soft glow that hints at an approaching dusk. The scene is slightly patriotic, slightly menacing, simultaneously evoking pride and suspicion.

The photograph, aptly titled "Ball Toss," won first place in the non-professional division of First National Bank’s "Visions" photography contest. The photo was also the first winning submission for photographer Renee Maxwell, a GIS specialist with the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Department of Space Planning and Management. But the honor has yet to go to her head.

"I don’t really expect to win a prize every time I submit," she said. "I like to contribute my stuff where I’ll see my work among other photographers I admire. It may not necessarily be a prize winner, but at least it’ll be on display."

Maxwell began exploring her interest in photography in 2003, after earning her degree in environmental studies in Sarasota, Fla. She said her first passion was for the written word, and she dreamt of becoming a novelist. But being a single mom to a child with ADHD prohibited a life of solitude that a novelist needs. Maxwell found an alternative creative outlet in photography.

"It helps me find a different way of looking at things I see every day," she said. "I walk to work a lot, I bike a lot and I find that having a camera with me gives me an incentive to look at things differently and to look for details most people overlook and to just capture them and show people something different. Or to show them something they see every day in a different light."

Maxwell, who is now married and lives in Columbia, first trained herself in photography using a digital camera. In January, she switched from digital to manual film cameras.

"I don’t know whether it’s backwards or forwards," she said. "But it seems like most people tend to start out shooting film, then make a switch to digital. I did the opposite because I thought the learning curve on digital is much shorter because you have the instant feedback, which is a wonderful thing for somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing right away."

Her first film camera was a toy camera, a Holga, "a $20 made-in-China all-plastic camera: plastic lens, plastic everything," as Maxwell describes it. It uses 120 mm film, which produces larger negatives. The camera has two settings and no flash, limiting what the photographer is able to capture. But it’s popular for the vintage-quality photos it takes in a soft focus with its edges wrapped in dark vignetting.

"It’s kind of a crapshoot, really, with the Holga," Maxwell said. "You never really know what you’re going to get. It’s kind of fun like that."

Although Maxwell also owns and shoots with a higher-end, glass-lensed Olympus XA rangefinder, she enjoys shooting vintage cameras such as her Holga more to collect and to use. Maxwell took her Holga to the Cooper County fair, where she obtained her prize-winning shot, and recently won an online auction bid for an Argus 75 vintage camera.

"I like mechanical versus all-electronic devices," she said. "I like the simplicity of the mechanism, though it depends on what kind of vintage camera. I like the dials and knobs as opposed to the buttons and screens."

Her fondness for the antiquated is neither a pretension nor an absolute. Although she shoots more on film, she posts her work regularly on her photoblog at www.haphazardous.net and appreciates work resulting from both digital and film cameras.

"I tend to think that it doesn’t really matter what your means is," she said. "It’s the end that counts. It’s the final product that counts."

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Reach Mary T. Nguyen at mtnguyen@tribmail.com or at (573) 815-1704.

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