Donnie Ray Crisp
@donnieraycrisp
Photographer based Germany
A boy with a pencil who loves to draw is how it all started — sort of.
Drawing has always been a big part of my life. One day a friend recommended me and I was asked by our community center if I would like to teach young children how to draw. After a couple of years doing that I had to quit though because I was very busy with my day job as a graphic designer and also had some projects on the side.
One little girl was upset because I had to go, she loved me as a teacher. A couple of months later, I got a call from Staedtler (one of the biggest companies manufacturing pencils and art supplies). They asked if I wanted to give some drawing lessons in their upcoming store opening in our city. Of course, I said yes! And, I also asked how they knew me…
"The mother of the little girl worked for Staedtler, and the girl had told her she wanted to see me again."
And so one thing led to another. After that first drawing lesson at Staedtler I began working with them on bigger projects where I created artwork that was printed on pencils, erasers, and other stuff, and I also gave drawing lessons in their headquarters and trade fairs.
At some point, Staedtler asked if I could create some drawing lessons for their YouTube channel. I had never done anything like that before, but I knew I needed to record myself. So I bought my first DSLR, which could record videos as well. And that was my stepping stone into photography.
So I started taking photos of landscapes, buildings, toys, pets, and occasionally the inside of a washing machine and trying to be creative. In the early days, when looking at professional photos, I always thought this is how they came out of the camera. And since I never seemed to reach that level of quality, I blamed my entry-level equipment for it. I never really cared for editing or composition, and RAW was just something funky that clogged up my PC’s storage. And I wouldn’t leave the house just to take some photos.
Fast forward a couple of years …
I am a web designer now who values great looking, thoughtful, clean design a lot. I am also a big tech nerd. I love owning or at least trying the latest tech. I also watch a lot of YouTube, and one of my favorite channels is MKBHD. The style, the music, the animations, and the value of his videos are unmatched. Marques is also a very nice guy. So in one video, he had a guest or rather did a collaboration with Peter McKinnon, whom I didn’t know at the time. He was such a coffee nerd, very sympathetic, and had this Grunge look, and somehow it just clicked. So I checked his channel and instantly fell in love. Now I am a huge fan! I enjoy his energy, the information he provides, showing the latest tech and techniques, doing magic tricks, drinking coffee, and always with a smile on his face. It was and is like MKBHD for photography.
"So I binged almost all of his videos. And that is when I learned that a taken photo is only half of the story and that editing is as important."
So here I was, all of these years later from traveling to France, Italy, Austria, Spain, Morocco, USA, and Canada with all these unedited photos… in JPEG!!! Which now makes me kind of mad.
Today I see photography in a different light at ISO 100 with AWB. But jokes aside … I am at the very beginning of my journey, and I am excited about what lies on the road ahead. Nowadays I leave the house every weekend just for photography. I am waking up at 3 AM, driving 2 hours just to capture the sunrise over a lake. Or going somewhere right before dusk, and the sun sets the autumn trees on fire. A single beam of light breaking through the forest roof just to sunkiss a little mushroom in the middle of nowhere. I love how every photo is unique in its own way because nobody stood exactly where I was in that moment, capturing something under certain light or weather conditions.
But it’s not just landscapes that fascinate me. From the tiny worlds beneath our feet to the depths of space, every layer has its own miracles and challenges trying to capture them. You can’t look into the eyes of an insect and say it doesn’t look amazing. The millions of facets and colors. Or snowflakes with their perfect weird crystal shapes and mushrooms rising like trees over the mossy forest ground. What they must look like from the eyes of an ant?! Incredible!!!
"Changing my gaze from the earth to the sky, one of the most iconic moments of my life was when I first captured the Andromeda galaxy."
A friend and I researched how to take photos of the deep space object and were amazed that we could do it with our stock DSLRs, and to push our results even further, all we needed was a StarTracker. It’s a little device that needs to be aligned with the pole star to match the earth’s rotation so that you can take long exposure shots of the night sky without any star trails. The moment I saw the galaxy in the display on the back of my camera, I was blown away. Once you realize how big a galaxy actually is and that there are millions in the night sky, and that our galaxy is just a dot in the endless universe, and our solar system is just a dot in our galaxy, and that planet Earth is just another dot in a chain of dots and certainly not the last – it shifts your mind.
Compared to all, we are nothing, and everything is meaningless. And that might not sound very optimistic, but it is. All it teaches us is to enjoy life, and the time we have on this beautiful planet. We could have ended up on the moon or mars. With nothing but rocks. But we are not. Instead, we are here. A place with turquoise water beaches, beautiful forests, rough cliffs along the oceanside, deserts, waterfalls, snowy mountains with golden sunrises, colorful rainbows and filled with life, amazing flora, and a large variety of incredible animals in all shapes and sizes.
"Planet Earth has to be one of the most amazing places and is so full of wonders. I feel honored to capture bits of it for others to enjoy."
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