Bridal Falls (1959)
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I’ve been taking photographs for a very long time! I picked up my first camera, a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, in 1956. It was fun, but I didn’t really take it seriously until 1959, whn I was 11. My parents took me to Niagara Falls. I took a a lot of photos, but one photo, the Bridal Falls shot above, was special. I knew it when I took it. I drove my Mom nuts waiting for the print to come back from Kodak in Rochester, NY. It finally came, and It “hooked” me forever on photography!
Soon, my Dad let me use his Argus C-3 rangefinder. It was fully manual; in those days nothing automatic existed. I was forced to learn photography the “hard” way. I learned by the trial and error method, learning the controls and what they did to the photo. The Argus and my Weston light meter were never far from my hands.
After using my Dad’s Argus, In 1965, my Dad bought me a Pentacon Praktica Mat, a cheap East German camera. [Dad was a working man and by no means was rich.) So, when the camera broke in 1968, I used my summer job earnings’ leftovers to get a Mamiya-Sekor 1000DTL, which I still have to this day. It still works! Then, in 1983, I stepped up to a Pentax SuperProgram. That one still works well. My son has that camera.
Then, everything changed. Digital photography was born! In 1998, I bought my first digital camera, a one-megapixel, fixed ISO 64, Nikon Coolpix 900. It set me back $1,000 and ate batteries like crazy! I’ve used many digital cameras since then, made by Canon and Olympus. Currently, I’m enjoying very much my Fuji X-H1 and X-Pro3. I also have Leica, not an”M,” but a CL. The M’s and Leica’s lenses are out of reach. After all, I am retired, now.
My work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions extensively throughout the Frederick, MD, and Carlisle, PA areas. I also have had my work shown in Potomac and Baltimore, MD. I am represented in Carlisle by The Garden Gallery and am a juried member at The Artists’ Gallery, Frederick’s oldest gallery, and at the Carlisle Arts Learning Center. I have been teaching photography and Adobe Photoshop at Frederick Community College sincd 2008 and have taught “Visual Reporting” at Shepherd University. I also have taught photography workshops at the Rehoboth Arts League in Rehoboth Beach, DE, and The Griffin Art Center in Frederick. And, last but not least, I was a contributing photographer for The Frederick Magazine and Montgomery Life magazine.