Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Cody.
Hi Chris, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I am an up and coming, Award Winning, Freelance Sports Photographer and Photojournalist.
Photos and written works have featured in or published by Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, The Baytown Sun, Galveston Daily News, The Anahuac Progress and The Vindicator and MaxPreps.
The passion for taking pictures started with a 10th grade photography class at Delta Junction High School, Alaska.
My art teacher, Mrs. Turner who came to Alaska from California, would give assignments as simple as “go out and shoot the world you live in”.
After winding a roll of black and white film from a spool in the dark room, we would end up on a mountaintop piled into somebody’s Subaru with our snowboards, taking pictures of everything all the way to the bottom of the slopes.
Moving to Texas in 2014 with my 4th wife and our 6-month-old daughter was a dream come true.
Mastering the electrical trade and moving into Electrical Design landed me with a desk job fifteen floors above a downtown Houston skyline.
It was then, in 2017, every Houstonian and most Texans met a hurricane named Harvey.Life spared and property repaired, our lives however, would be forever changed.
“Life is too short” was the only reason I ever heard said after she left.
In an empty house, and a career I had no reason to continue and only being allowed to be a dad two weeks out of a month, I started over again.
A good friend from high school that knew me better than I did myself, gave me a gift. A camera.
She remembered the person I was, the fearless carefree artist I had forgotten.
Two and a half decades later and a change to digital from 35mm film, I started taking pictures again.
I never missed a sunrise or a sunset. Not a single sunny day in the country or rainy day on the beach. Not even a single night walking the streets of Houston passed me by, without shooting every breath of it.
Years of being a secret art junkie, I would loom with a paintbrush over a canvas after 12 hour shifts in a basement of some powerhouse or steel mill, could compare to freedom in every picture that I have taken since.
Every clack of the shutter and every one of the hundreds of thousands of images that it captured was my muse.
Is my muse.
Is what I am finally good at and the reason I’m here.
In 2 years came the pandemic. I became my daughter’s kindergarten teacher and full time dad.
My only hope to provide for us was to turn my newly found addiction of photography and give it a company name and open a small business.
In the electrical trade, everyone has a nickname. One nickname I was given was C squared. Its a play off of my initials CC. That in turn became c2pix Photography.
Now with my fifth chance at life, I’ve got a camera in one hand while the other hand holds my daughter’s.
Every day.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
rocky road for sure. between single dad life while shooting all day and editing all night mixed with everything it takes to run a small business.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My bread is buttered by sports photography. Any sports and all sports, mentally I have a checklist where a box gets checked when shooting something for the first time. Like: Clay Pigeon shooting (check), WaterPolo (check), Professional Baseball (check.)
Sports is where I have won awards and I do every day.
I am known for having a 10 sec precognition of where I need to be to get a shot of something that’s about to happen. Sometimes I get that shot and sometimes I can’t possibly get there in time or I’m not allowed to be there. Football however, I’m pretty good at being in the spot on time. Also I don’t recall ever submitting a photo to anyone after a game where you can couldnt look at the image and know exactly what is happening. The whole picture is worth a thousand words moto will probably be on my headstone.
BUT.
Long Exposure Photography is what I love. This is my art and my connection to Houston. capturing light trails from a passing train on Main St. or Medical District is what is more specifically my favorite and where the beauty of houston comes from. The skyline from an overpass with tail lights and headlights streaking into infinity is also pretty amazing.
Doing this type of photography is like seeing a magic trick done in real time or developing film in a darkroom when you place a blank piece of paper in tub of stop-bath and an image fades into the world for the first time.
With this though, setting your camera up just right, pushing a button at a moving object and then seeing an image pop up on your camera screen that makes your breath stop for just an instant, then you exhale with satisfaction of yesssss.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
You don’t need a fancy doodad or gadget for everything that has to do with a camera to take great photos. Buy the best glass you can afford that fits on the camera body made by the people you trust most, you won’t go wrong.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://c2pix.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealchriscody
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/c2pix
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/c2pix
