Welcome to my first blog! I hope to make this a regular feature and use it to keep readers updated on my work, client info and tips to better your own photography.  Since this is the first time I have 'blogged' I figured I should give everyone an idea of how I got to the point of making pictures for money. 

My interest in photography began in 1986 when I signed up for a photography class in high school because I figured it would be a great class that would keep me near the graphic arts room I loved being in.  Little did I know that I would begin to love photography so much that it would become a large part of who I am.  Being able to create images furthered my artistic ability and to this day I get excited about looking at an image for the first time.  My teacher, Mr. Queary, (anyone who went to MVU will know who I am talking about) was great in that he imparted knowledge about not only f-stops, iso's and shutter speeds, but also about succeeding in life.  The darkroom was a place where I learned to make chemicals and silver work together to make prints.  A Pentax k100 and later an Olympus OM were my first experience with real cameras and they were fantastic to learn on if you wanted to know more than point and shoot.  Rolling your own film and processing it gives you a great idea of what to expect from a processor when you start relying on them to do it for you. 

The picture below is of a friend of mine who volunteered to be a subject while learning different portrait lighting techniques.  Thanks Becky!  I found this last week and it brought back a lot of memories of those days.  We had a simple set up with two incandescent fixtures, a white sheet background and the camera on a tripod.  In these times of 50000 point auto focus, 1 million ISO and 100o megapixel cameras, I found myself thinking about Tri-X black and white film. 

Since then, we've had the digital revolution and this peaked my interest in new technology.  Learning Photoshop, Lightroom, printing and all of the other things that go along with it has been a real process and as any photographer will tell you, an expensive one.  It sure is tough to keep up with the latest cameras, computers, etc.  But being able to fully control what happens to your images after they come out of the camera was one of the greatest developments (pardon the pun) ever! No more do we have to rely on what the print machine at the Photomat thinks our prints should look like or depend on the new kid to process our slides.  We can do it all at home! 

So then one day, I was asked to shoot a wedding for a friend and realized that I could make money with my camera.  I liked it so I shot a few more and even started with stock images.  I was published when I sold a digital copy of a slide that I shot of carrots and horse grain to Horse Illustrated Magazine.  In addition, I have shot landscapes, portraits, macro, sports, and anything else that I thought was interesting.  Life changes slowed me down some but I now have time again to concentrate on making this a business and while starting slowly, I am hoping to expand more in the coming year.