OAA's Featured Artist is  Douglas Thompson

Doug Thompson is an Oaklander and an OAA board member. He has been involved in various art forms for more than 50 years. First as an art director/graphic designer for computer games and other tech companies, then as a freelance computer graphics artist for film and broadcast.  It was his experience in these last disciplines that really formed his interest in photography.

He discovered the camera first as a means of recreating real-world objects and accurate local lighting for landscapes used in computer graphics imagery (CGI) projects. The process involved using a series of photos to create HDRI (high dynamic range imagery) and panoramas to use as “back plates” and lighting data for computer generated sets. These experiences got him hooked on photography for more fine art purposes, especially landscape photography. With digital cameras he discovered that he could have far more accurate renditions of color and fine detail than was possible from film photography, not to mention having more control over the final image than film and at considerably less cost.

Although he primarily does landscape photography these days, he still likes to dabble in CGI projects. He likes to think of these 3D graphics as doing a kind of Virtual photography, like taking photos of things that haven’t really been seen in real life.