For as long as I can remember, I have always had an artistic side. Early in my life, this took the form of coloring and drawing. Later, I began to paint with acrylics and oils. I took time to work in pastels and charcoal as my interest and talent grew.
Much of my progression is a result of teachers and other adults encouragement. This coupled with some success in municipal and regional competitions gave me the confidence to try other mediums with which I could portray reality. After high school, I began to become interested in photography.
At first, this interest was purely documentary as I too hoped to preserve a few memories. Manned with an old rangefinder camera that I had picked up at a thrift shop, I began to realize that photography was an art medium with which I could express myself. In college, I took a photography class to augment the sketching class I was taking. Before long, I found I was spending more time in the dark room than the art room.
After this introductory class, I bought my first 35 mm camera, an Olympus OM-10 camera. This became my constant companion as I began to see everything from within a 50mm lens. When I graduated from college, I found myself collecting more cameras and lenses as I tried to find the perfect piece of equipment to help me capture my vision. I am still on this quest and probably will be for the rest of my life.
Over the years I have seen myself moving away from film as a medium and more towards a digital workflow. I began with a 3 megapixel Nikon CoolPix 990 which at the time was outrageously expensive. While I loved the digital medium, I really missed the power and flexibility of an SLR. When the price for this type of camera became more affordable, I quickly purchased and have never looked back.
I invite you to review some of the pictures I have taken. I created a Photo Blog that displays a new photo every day. If you are interested in the cameras I use then I invite you to look over my equipment list. If you have questions or would like to talk about photography please contact me . I am always interested in talking to others with similar interests.
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| Photo Equipment | My Scrapbook | Photo Blog |
As I look back at the evolution of equipment even just in my lifetime, I am amazed at how fan we have come. From that first class in college where we used viewfinder cameras and did all of our own developing and printing that was just the beginning. My dad was also big into photography. My mom would always blame me as the person who introduced him to the creativity of photography.
Shortly after my first SLR camera purchase, dad likewise bought one. He did not stop there. Dad bought a color enlarger to do his own processing. The house I grew up in was extremely small and there was no room for a dark room. Dad was able to use one of the bathrooms in the house and made it light secure. He would spend hours working on color prints to get everything just right. After I left the house, my parents bought a new place and dad had a dark room built in the basement giving him a dedicated space. He still has that equipment although it doesn't get used very often.
Now everything we shoot is digital from the camera through the workflow. I am printing fewer and fewer physical prints but I have have a growing collection of electronic frames that rotate through the pictures that we've taken. I do have to admit, there are times that I miss the magic of a dark room and watching your image appear as the paper floats in a bath of chemicals. Funny, I never remember how awful the smell of the chemicals was or how depressed I would get when I realized that the one shot I thought I had nailed didn't turn out with no chance to retake it now that I was in the lab.
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