THE LUSCIOUS IMAGES OF COPI VOJTA – PART 1
Taking a good picture is a hard thing. Taking a bunch of good pictures is even harder. Consistently taking not only great but unique pictures is the hardest of all. Flipping through the Drake & Fly Fish Journal you get to take in so much great work but I always found myself staring at some pictures more than others…they were unique, gritty, dirty and imperfect but always said so much more than the others…..to me they had soul. It just so happened that all the pics were from the same dude with a name I couldn’t pronounce, I began to look for them in each issue that arrived. So that you dont have to dig through your past issues CHECK N RESPECK his work right here ILLCENTRIFUGAL.COM & CBVPHOTOGRAPHICS.COM
I dug Copi’s work so much I reached out to him for a little convo about what he does and other shit…here is the result.
PART ONE:
1. The Genesis of Copi Vojta in:
a)Fly Fishing
When I was six or seven I pimped some feathers from our house, found a pin, bent it and tried wrapping thread around it and securing the feathers. My creation didn’t catch anything. a year or so later, a friend gave me some steelhead flies his gramps tied up, and my favorite one was the bright pink one. I tied one onto a spinning rod and cast it into a pool and watched a giant fish come from the other side and inhale it. Shortly after, it snapped the line and I cried. When I was ten or eleven my grandpa took me to the firehole river and taught me how to tie the clinch knot, then bailed on me to go catch fish on pmd’s…I didn’t catch anything. A year later for Christmas he gave me a fly tying kit. I still had the hoffman saddles till someone stole em from my ride a few years ago…finally I got a fly rod and caught a fish. I don’t remember where or what kind it was.
b) Photography
When I left Arizona to go work in Wyoming for a summer, my dad let me borrow his film camera. it was mostly automatic and i don’t remember what kind it was. Before that I would use the disposable kind. Then when I was in steamboat working as a liftie, a backpack was returned as a lost and found item. It had a sweet nikkormat in it and a few candy bars. I ate the candy bars and at the end of the season I got to keep the camera. I still have it; it has a light leak, and sometimes makes for cool effects, holga-ish almost.
c) Which came first
fishing, although my mother gave me the photog gene. She was a talented shutterbug in her day, till me and my sis took all her free time away…
2. First camera you owned, what do you own now?
Besides the disposable ones, it was that nikkormat that i got to keep. Now I have a nikon d700, d200, an F2, an FG, the nikkormat FT, a holga and a life magazine camera that my uncle just gave me.
3. What was the first picture you got paid for……what did you spend the money on?
fall issue of the drake with the chick gripping and grinning on the cover, there is a sweet shot of a mako shark doing a misty 900. I think I probably had to pay rent with it. Not that i can pay my rent with one published photo, though…
4. Out of the million shots you have taken which do you feel is the most complete?
The one that i have yet to take. It’s the ones that aren’t complete that stay on my mind the longest…
5. Favorite lens? If you could only shoot with one lens from now until eternity which would it be?
nikkor 50mm f1.4 it’s buttery smooth, fast and small.
6. What is in your pockets at this very moment? (take pic of the contents)
coozie and a fishing license, I come prepared.
7. Digital or Vinyl? Why?
Vinyl. I think chicks would dig a guy with a record player more that a dude with an ipod, everyone’s got a fuckin ipod these days. Who has a record player?? I don’t…analog shit has more soul to it, more character, which i think is ever so important.
8. Favorite river?
It changes with every new river I get to fish. Most recently I cheated on the Colorado with a Wyoming river. But I do prefer freestones…
9. Salt or Fresh?
Fresh
10. Best fish story?
I’m a lame storyteller, and this is one of those stupid things you did as a dumb kid. Highly illegal and all. Back in the day in Arizona, we used to poach this private lake and catch huge rainbows. one day we brought buckets and threw fish in them and transplanted them into a water tank/pond at one of our woods party spots. we got to catch some big rainbows outta that pond for a few weeks.
11. Story behind the most difficult shot to get?
So far it has definitely been the spawning brown trouts that I’ve shot the past two seasons. The Flyfish Journal published one a few issues ago. Basically i have to camp out at these mini waterfalls for hours at a time, and hope that enough fish jump for me to get them, and that if i do get them that they are in focus. I used a manual focus 105mm lens and crouched half in the bushes and half in the creek and just waited, looking through the viewfinder. Some days I’d be on the crick bank for four or five hours, other days, i would call it after two. I would have to take breaks every so often cause my legs were falling asleep.
12. Ever seen a Unicorn?
Not yet
Check back tomorrow when we talk about Heroin, punching shit in the face and what happens to rods n reels when they are run over.
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Taking a good picture is a hard thing. Taking a bunch of good pictures is even harder. Consistently taking not only great but unique pictures … Read More →
If yesterdays post was a nice reach around get to know you then todays conclusion is more of a deep tracks session. A big thanks …
5 Comments
Been liking that fella’s stuff… nice pick.
That mako pic is badass. Just sain’
Copi kills.
nice interview. respeck
Amazing pics and great, no-bullshit answers
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