Since I was rather silly with my post for February 14th, I'll make up for it today with a real biography of one of Park Seed Company's favorite characters, Mr. Ron Breazeale.
According to Jeff Smith, our Chief Creative Officer, Ron Breazeale (pronouced Brazil) is one of the top technical photographers in the United States. "When it comes to perfectly lighting and shooting a flower speciman, Ron is the best," states Jeff. "His attention to detail is phenominal."
Ron began working at Park Seed in April of 1984, which meant that he was here just in time to be deeply involved in documenting the major events of our Seeds in Space adventures (see "Seeds in Space" on our main websites, or Seeds in Space! items in this blog). Ron and Jim (Dr. Jim Alston--see "What's Up, Doc?!") have some pretty amazing--and humorous--stories to tell about their trips to Cape Kennedy.
To read more about Ron, check "continue reading," below.
Ron Breazeale Biography
Whenever I meet customers from around the country, one of the first questions is always "Where do you get those beautiful pictures that you use in the catalog?" While we do get some images from external sources, Park Seed is blessed to have Mr. Ron Breazeale as our in-house photographer. As he puts it, he is "busy all the time" taking pictures of seeds, plants, and products for all of the Park Seed and Wayside Gardens mail-order catalogs and websites.
Some of photos are taken right here, in our 9-acre trial garden. Other plant specimens are grown by Jim Alston's team in the Research Greenhouse and used as catalog models. And sometimes, Ron has to go where the flowers are. "Through the years, I've taken lots of photo trips," recalls Ron. "I remember one time, Karen Park Jennings and I were in Santa Barbara shooting flower photos. We like to include people in the catalog pictures from time to time, so we took turns taking pictures of each other next to the blossoms. Well, one gentleman offered to take a picture of 'the happy couple.' Karen just laughed and told him 'No thanks--we aren't a family unit.'"
For most of us, taking a picture is a simple matter of pointing and shooting with the latest digital technology. For Ron, however, taking a picture is both a work of art and of science--and always a labor of love. When I asked him to describe some of his duties, he starting talking about "executing color densitometric quality control" and doing "spot film-plane metering." When Ron began his photographic career, high resolution images of flowers were made with large format film cameras. And to ensure optimal quality control, Ron did his own film development work. Park Seed boasts a good-sized, well equiped photo studio and film laboratory--although the latter has now become a photo storage area. "We were among the early catalogers to experiment with digital photography years back, and digital has now become the standard," notes Ron.
Of course, all work and no play makes Ron a dull boy. So what is Ron's favorite hobby? "Photography, of course!" he states with a grin. Ron sees photography as an important tool for documenting life. "On every first date with a new girl, I made sure to get a picture of the two of us together, so that our future family album could start with that first event!" says Ron. At least one young lady must not have thought that that was too strange--the lovely Mary Jo Breazeale confirms that their family album does, indeed, contain a first-date photo. (Mary Jo works at Park Seed, too. But we'll save her story for another time.) Ron and Mary Jo have one son who is 28 years old. And his life is, no doubt, thoroughly documented in photographs!
In recent years, Ron has taken on one additional hobby: jet engine maintenance. "It just sounded interesting," he replies, when asked how he got into that arena. "I appreciate the precision of the mechanism and the challenge of making things work perfectly."
So the next time you admire the perfection of a blossom's image in our catalog or on our websites, remember Ron and the attention to detail that he invested in bringing that image to you.
Wow. I had no idea my company id photo was taken by such a photography genius. I can't wait to see how it turns out now!
Posted by: Jennifer | March 01, 2007 at 10:47 AM