Mike Maxwell: Behold a man and his camera

MOULTRIE —

When Mike Maxwell was an elementary student in Moultrie, he enjoyed sketching and dreamed of one day becoming an artist.

And while he has never sold a drawing or seen one of his paintings hanging in a gallery, Maxwell’s photography reveals his artist’s eye.

As the longtime Colquitt countian puts it, “Photography is just painting with light.”

Maxwell, who is the office manager at Godley Transmissions, has spent much of the past 40 years taking photographs in his spare time.

He enjoys working with his hands and was employed with Parker Machine for nearly 20 years.

But after he punched the clock in the evening or had a weekend or vacation time, Maxwell found another use for those hands: turning the focus ring and releasing the shutter on his camera.

Maxwell has approached his avocation with the dedication and desire of a professional, but he is content to approach it with the hobbyist’s sensibility.

He’s never seriously tried to market his photographs.

“Oh, I’ve sold a couple over the years,” he says. “But it’s just been a hobby. All I’ve ever wanted to do was just get better.

“I always thought that if I’d just remain humble and was eager to learn, I’d be good at it. It’s been all about learning. I always wanted to learn more and more. And if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right.”

After years of working at his craft, he entered an image in the Open Color Nature category at the Sunbelt Photography Club and Albany Arts Council Contest in 2005 and earned honorable mention with his “Clipper at Callaway.”

Also that year, he entered several of his photographs in the Georgia National Fair Contest in Perry. He took a first place and fifth place in the Open Color I Spy category; a first in Open Color – Plant Life; a fourth and fifth in Open Color – Scenic; and fifth in Open Color, Still Life.

He continued to earn the judges’ respect the next year, winning ribbons at Macon’s Cherry Blossom Festival Photo Contest; the St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge contest, in which he took a first place in Open Color – Scenic; the Georgia State Fair in Macon, winning three blue ribbons; the Sunbelt Photography Club and Albany Arts Council Contest, taking first place three more times; and the Georgia National Fair, taking a first-, a third-, a fourth- and two sixth-place finishes.

But it was at the Georgia National Fair in 2007, that Maxwell really made his mark.

Eighteen of his 24 entries placed. His photographs earned five first-place awards. He won five awards for second-place; one for third; two for fourth; three for fifth; and two for sixth.

And for winning the most ribbons in the contest, Maxwell was presented the Open Photo Sweepstakes award.

He also was asked to judge the following year’s contest.

“That was a big honor,” he said.

The years traveling the country with cameras, lenses and tripods had paid off.

And it all started with a Polaroid his mother gave him when he was 15.

Maxwell grew up in Colquitt County and had visions of playing football for the Moultrie High Packers.

But in 1971, when his father retired from the Moultrie Police Department, the family moved to Carrabelle, Fla., where he took the cumbersome Polaroid Instant and began shooting the Gulf Coast community.

For his 16th birthday, he received his first 35mm camera, a Konica rangefinder. It wasn’t long before he had his first single-lens reflex camera, a Minolta 200 series.

He did some photography while in high school in Carrabelle, learning his craft, developing and printing black-and-white images.

He also was influenced by his cousin, longtime Moultrie Observer photographer John Mercer.

“I always looked up to John,” Maxwell said. “When I was a boy and John was in the Air Force, I’d go to Aunt Inez’s house, lie on John’s bed and look up at all the models he had.”

Maxwell also was influenced by the photographer John Shaw.

“But I learned in bits and pieces,” he said. “Whatever I learned, whether it was metering or composition, I’d do it until I knew it and I could share it with others.”

Maxwell moved back to Moultrie in 1976 and continued to hone his craft,

He joined several clubs, including the ones in Tallahassee and Albany and at the St. Mark’s Wildlife Refuge.

“I met a lot of people and learned from them,” he said.

He shoots a wide variety of subjects and is comfortable with lenses from a macro through a telephoto.

Maxwell enjoys shooting old barns and buildings and when photographing people, he prefers to do it outdoors.

“That’s where we are in our element,” he says. “That’s where people are at their best. And it makes the color stand out more.”

Perhaps his favorite subject is wildlife and he has a large collection of birds and other animals in their natural habitat.

“If it looks interesting, I want to shoot it,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll start shooting a flower and end up shooting a bug.”

Maxwell’s travels with his camera have taken him to Arizona, to the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia and to the shores of St. Augustine and the Gulf Coast.

He has a collection of Nikon cameras and lenses and will have a bag full of equipment when he climbs into his truck for a trip seeking interesting images.

And after years of shooting film or slides and having to send off the precious rolls, he has been shooting digitally for a number of years.

His darkroom now includes several programs loaded on his computers.

And that new technology has allowed him look at his subjects at new ways.

“There’s a lot of beauty out there and we overlook it,” Maxwell said.

Spending some time with Maxwell’s collection of images encourages the viewer to take a closer look at the world around him, whether it’s a bee on a bloom, a tree growing out of the bed of pickup truck, a fox and her kit, a bunch of colored toothpicks or a digital look at a violin and a rose.

Maxwell makes it difficult to overlook his vision of beauty.

 

 

 

 

 

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Mike Maxwell: Behold a man and his camera