I was bitten by the photo bug as a freshman in high school when I enrolled in a photography class. Even before then I had a fascination with cameras. I asked for the just released Kodak Instamatic 44 camera in 1969 for my tenth birthday. I recall being at an F.W Woolworth store in Whittier, California and finding a cheap five dollar plastic camera before the Kodak came along. I can only remember it being black and turquoise in color...Ironic, how those simplistic vintage cameras are now coming into vogue with some photographers wishing to create an authentic slightly blurred vintage-esque effect that they didn't have to go to Photoshop to create...funny...wait...I mean "artsy".
I wish that I had both of those cameras now...just to hold them in my hands. To perhaps help me recall exactly the sensation of pushing down a seriously stiff shutter release button. To wind and wind till a click stopped me from winding any more.
The first time I placed my hands in photographic chemicals under the red hues of a safe light, watching my watery images magically emerge that had been shot with a Yashica D Twin Lens Reflex Camera, I knew I had found my passion. Sometimes I yearn once more for a darkroom converted from a closet or a bathroom or out in a garage...just to feel that liquid coolness on my hands once more...but I talk myself out of it...the chemistry isn't so healthy on the lungs. Glad my teenage mind didn't think about such things in my four years of hanging in the high school darkroom...I just shot and developed shot and developed shot and developed. I still have every single film negative from that younger simpler time...perhaps as concrete proof of the younger and the simpler...
My first "serious" camera that I could truely call my own...not a weekend loan out from the high school photo department was an L-17 35mm SLR camera by GAF....at the time in high school, I couldn't afford one of the serious brands so the GAF had to do...and it served its purpose well at the time...until I realized I needed a Canon 35 mm very badly, then the GAF not only seemed inferior in an off brand sort of way, but even shooting with it didn't feel efficient any longer. Ahhh the fickle and odd world of the late teens teenager...I next discovered you could buy used camera's at Monte's Camera shop in Whittier. I purchased a very reliable Canon EF 35 mm Camera. I loved that camera and it made shooting in black and white so much more gratifying. I still own it...perhaps in case I find myself in a darkroom once again...after all they still make film and they still make darkroom chemicals...
When Digital first hit the scene I was right there with an Olympus C-2500L Camera. It was so small and light I almost always had it with me...I couldn't do much with the images I produced early on, cept maybe print 5x7 inch prints. Resolution just wasn't there yet...but right there and then, the new fangled, instant gratification thang replaced smelly chemical darkroom photography forever...at least for me.
Fast foward to right now in the present. I shoot with a very high end digital camera, the Nikon D2X, that was sooo expensive that I made sure to have insurance on it...that helped tremendously with having it out in public..."oh my gawd...will I drop it!? Will it get wet in the rain and break!? Will I have someone snatch it off my neck and run.!? Will I set it down and forget it...and remember when I have driven away never to see my little "fort knox" camera ever again.!?" I have had it for many gratifying and lucrative years. But it was peculiar to have such a "substantial" piece of equipment around my neck...something happens to your mind around that...till you finally relax one day and can finally say "heck with it!"...the insurance helped that process...I am also shooting with a high end point and shoot that I can fit in my pocket... a Lumix DMC LX3 for those times when carrying an extreme amount of bulk just won't cut it
I love to shoot, that is all there is to it. I have loved it for over four decades. When I left my "nine to five" life to do free lance Photographical and Graphical work, it was sooo scarey...and then I sold my first print...and then I had my first image published and so on...I truly have a stirring passion for what happens when my eye perceives and creates...capturing a moment in time. When you pay attention to my work it makes it all worth while...like your getting a glimpse of seeing through my eyes..
