Kenneth Wiatrak

Finding something to adore

Shooting a fingernail clipper it was light gradations along its smooth lines and curves. With these developmentally disabled boys it was how they stood a little taller when they put on Boy Scout uniforms.

My client at Mercury Marine said my pictures give their products personality. I don’t have five magic lighting/lens formulas. Each subject is its own, distinct entity. My method is to find what makes this person, this product, this place beautiful or unique.

I grew up in Detroit. Self taught in photography, I began, as a young man looking at the unique, the scary, the beautiful through the safe intermediary of a camera. My first photos were dead, plucked chickens hanging in an open air market.

The University of Michigan School of Art gave me technical tools and time to experiment. I studied Densitometry under Phil Davis, learned about “Art & Visual Perception” from its author Rudolph Arnheim.

Since then my editorial images have been published in International Soccer Net, Monthly Detroit Magazine, Detroit Free Press Magazine, Miami Magazine, Saturday Review, Drama Review, LA Reader.

My commercial clients have included: Mercury Marine, Element Aerospace, Line-Cutterz, Doncasters, LTD., Sona Enterprises, Walt Disney Feature Animation, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Blumhouse Productions, Dentsu Advertising-Tokyo, Universal Studios, CBS Studios, NBC Studios,  Panasonic Corporation, KNBC Television, KCAL Television, Capitol Records, Paramount Studios, Humprey/Browning/McDougall Advertising, J. Walter Thompson, Hawaiian Telephone, Millici-Valenti Advertising, Castle Advertising, Warner Brothers Studios, New Line Cinema, Hyundai Corporation, Diamond Advertising Inc. and CBS Studios.