My passion for photography was sparked by my uncle at the age of 12. After earning enough money from many summer lawn mowing jobs I was able to buy my own 35mm camera and have had one ever since. In high school, I joined the yearbook staff as a photographer, and had a great time photographing sports, people, and all the various school events. Using the school’s darkroom, I learned to develop black and white film negatives and printing and enlarging techniques to save the school money. I even developed my own negatives at home, turning the bathroom into a makeshift darkroom (much to my mother’s dismay) by stuffing towels under the door to make it completely dark. Over the years I’ve always been the person with the camera.
I’m now retired from a 40 year career in Information Technology and am concentrating on capturing fine art landscape and nature images. I also teach photography classes, and photograph real estate, couples, families, children, high school seniors, and sports.
What I love about photography is that it’s this beautiful melding of something fairly technical that also engages the artistic part of me. For me, photography is really all about the journey – finding and exploring new places, learning and experimenting with different equipment and techniques, and meeting interesting people along the way.
My Equipment
As Photographers, we have an incredible choice of photographic equipment today with many manufacturers offering excellent price, performance, and quality. Among the best manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon and Sony, image quality and performance is virtually indistinguishable so it is really a matter of personal choice as to what “system” you buy. Personally, I photograph with Canon cameras and lenses because they give me the superior image quality and performance I expect. I believe the Canon EOS Camera System is one of the most complete systems in the world offering the widest range of camera bodies, lenses (over 60), and accessories of any camera manufacturer today. My current equipment is:
Camera Bodies:
- Canon EOS 630 SLR – Film body
- Canon EOS 5D Mark III and Canon EOS 5D Mark IV DSLR’s
Lenses:
- Canon EF 11-24mm f/4 L USM
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L III USM
- Canon EF 24-105 f/4 L II IS USM
- Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS II USM
- Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM macro
- Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM
- Canon Extender EF 1.4x III
- Canon Extender EF 2x II
- Canon EF II 12 & 25mm Extension Tubes
Tripod | Head | Printer | Filters | Other Accessories:
- Gitzo GT3530 LSV Carbon Fiber Tripod
- Really Right Stuff BH-55 ballhead
- Epson Stylus Pro 3880 Printer
- Canon 600EX-RT Flash, with ST-E3-RT transmitter
- Canon GPS Receiver GP-E2
- Garmin GPSMAP 66i Handheld GPS with inReach
- B + W Kaseman Circular Polarizing filer
- Lee 1, 2, and 3 stop 4″ X 6″ soft graduated neutral density filters, “Big Stopper” 10-stop filter
Computers and Software:
I have custom built all my computers, and am currently running Windows 10 with 32GB of memory. For photography, all my post processing is done in Adobe Lightroom Classic with any special processing done in Adobe Photoshop CC. I also use the DxO Nik Software Suite.