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Matinee: Steve Nesius
7 July 2018
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 247th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Steve Nesius.
This 4:32 video from the Tampa Bay Times profiles photojournalist Steve Nesius as he tools around his neighborhood on Terra Ceia Island, Fla. But that's only half the story.
"I went to college after high school for one year," he begins his story. "I didn't like it and then I moved to California and surfed there and got a job as a carpenter."
He went back to school by the time he was 30, though. And somehow he got into photojournalism. After 10 years as a photo editor with the Associated Press in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, he began shooting assignments as a full-time freelance photographer in Florida.
He knows the photojournalism part of the story will have an end soon. The business isn't what it used to be. But he wants to keep shooting.
So he's mining the beauty of his neighborhood, which includes the Terra Ceia Preserve, to transition to the life of a fine artist.
"What's cool about that is I know where to go, what times, where to be," he notes. Although even with that advantage, you still have to patient. He once had to wait two hours to get an interesting shot of a couple of spoonbills on a branch.
The other half of the story?
One day he walked by an old building whose siding was being removed. He asked if he could have the scrap and the builders were happy to have him haul it away.
That's where his past as a carpenter came in handy.
He cleaned up the old wood and cut it down into framing for his fine art photos. They were a perfect match -- much like his skills behind the camera and at the table saw.