Parker J. Pfister saw the possibilities of digital early on: greater image control and lots more fun experimenting, trying to capture the emotion of a moment and trigger responses from viewers and subjects. When he started shooting with Nikon cameras, the doors really opened. “I loved the quality of the images, the color rendition and the ‘contrast pop’ that I get right out of the camera,” he says. “And the great dynamic range—all the detail in the highlights and shadows.”

The problem was that Parker’s style and the unmistakable look and feel of his photographs came from shooting film. “In the film days I’d accidentally underexpose something and overexpose something else,” he says, “and those happy mistakes brought so much life to the images. Had they been perfect exposures, they would have been…well, maybe boring. So I started playing around with trying to screw up, pushing as far as I could go to see what happened and learning from that, conducting almost controlled experiments.”

When he switched to digital, he lost the look and the mood. “To get it back in those early digital times, I started to shoot at unheard of ISO speeds. They said back then that anything over 400 ISO was junk, so I thought, okay, what does 800 look like? And how can I use that to my advantage?”

Long story short, he pushed hard and got the look back. But now what, now that he’s got Nikons like the D3X and D3S that are capable of startling low-light performance at ISOs of 1600, 3200, 6400 and beyond belief?

“Well, you could do it in post processing,” he says, “or you can cowboy up and keep pushing. I’m putting on the ten-stop neutral density filter and shooting higher and higher ISOs—because I like that look. And when I start with a solid image, I can go in any direction I want. You obviously see the way I push my images around, so the more information I have, the more I can push ‘em, the more I can apply what I learned in the film world.”

Some of what he applies to his fine art, portrait, wedding and commercial work are favorite techniques, like capturing layers of definition in a photograph. “I love to shoot through a ton of stuff. If you shoot wide open through something that’s super close, it just becomes a color cast, and then there’s stuff a little bit closer to the subject that becomes a little bit more defined…until you get to the subject, who’s sharp.”

Some of what he learned has to do with his preference for prime lenses. “I use what I call forced composition because for a long time I was not a zoom lens fan—though I’ve started to change my mind on that after shooting some Nikon zooms and being blown away by what they can pull off; the sharpness is unreal. But with prime lenses, you’re basically back against the wall. When I couldn’t back up anymore, how was I going to make an image? So I started forcing myself to see differently; that could mean just a slight tilt of the camera to fit in what I needed to fit in, to not miss the moment. So that tilt became part of the style. Now everyone tilts the camera, so I don’t do it.”

Some of what he applies are post-processing presets that favor desaturation. “Color is a crutch,” he says. “My favorite images are not in bright brilliant color.”

And some of it is…really different.

“I call it rephotographing, and I’ve been doing it for years. I shoot digitally, I’ll print the image, then photograph the print using film, process the film and often get some grain going in that negative so the grain people see in a lot of my images is true film grain; then I’ll scan in the negative, and that scan becomes the final image.

“Now I’m starting to play with a wet plate camera. So what’s going to happen next? You know it: digital to wet plate back to digital.

“It’s an amazing transformation because there are so many stops on the train where you can get off, play around a little bit and then jump back on. It’s incredibly exciting. I’m doing stuff and making images I literally couldn’t have made before.”

So the clean, sharp, bright, brilliant, insert-whatever-adjective-you-like-here image that comes right out of the camera is nowhere near end-result territory for Parker. Think of it as just a step in an ongoing imaging adventure in which all things are considered possible.

Parker’s website and blog, at www.parkerjphoto.com, feature a variety of his images and his commentary on the art and craft of photography.