From Baptist Minister to Multimedian

Fascination with technology. I've always loved future programs, astronomy science fiction as a kid, tearing apart radios and TV when I was in high school. When I got married seven years ago I was doing campus ministry and couldn't find any work as an ordained baptist minister. I decided to do something I really love.

What do you love most about your new life?

Working in multimedia isgiving me the tools to express things artistically and visually. This is a big breakthough because I couldn't have imagined being any kind of artist because I couldn't have imagined making a living doing it. Now I especially love the toys and the technology. I'm working on an SGI machine which means I can play on the biggest baddest machine and use the toughest software!

Editor's note: SGI Is a Silicon Grpahics machine, the highend computer for graphics like you see in movies and sophisticated computer games.

How did you manage to learn all these new tools and technologies?

Instead of just going to graduate school, I invested $8,000 originally, all at once, in a good Macintosh computer and some accompanying hardware, and a lot of software. I spent the first six months teaching myself and then I took courses when I needed them. I also joined a lot of SIGs (Special Interest Groups) and learned a lot about how other people solve technical computer problems and also artistic computer problems.

Here is an image Tim made on his Macintosh Centris 660 computer just 8 months after he taught himself to use drawing programs. This is Tim's original design for a museum interior.

What advice would you give to others who would like to try something similar?

Marry rich.

Do it while you're single because I'm on that curve now with two kids and it's really tough.

Make the leap while you have the least amount of non-negotiable responsibilities like kids and spouses - those are mandatory responsbilities. What's the point of doing technology if the rest of your life is a mess. Take care of your life and the people in it.

Hook up with fun people who are also interested in technology. That's what's as invigorating as anything - that's half the fun. If there were people in campus ministry as energetic and passionate as my friends in multimedia, I'd probably still be doing that.

Tim Pennington-Russell is a multimedia artist, producer and web designer who lives in San Francisco with his Minister wife Julie and two young fast-growing children.