Growing up in the 1960s was a wild experience in America. It had it's good and bad points but one thing about it is that fit in with our family life because there was a huge emergence of creativity in music, art and other things. All in my family took on different aspects of creative endeavors. One of mine (among many others) was photography.

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Even though I liked photography a lot, we were poor (my dad died when I was 8) and I had no experience. Also photography back then was quite primitive as compared to today. My 1st camera was a very cheap very poor quality camera I bought at the local 5 and dime store (similar to our dollar stores today) for $1 (probably about $8 equivalent today) with the brand name Diana! With a name like that how could it be any good? It was not. It had a plastic lens and took lousey, out of focus pictures. But I had to start somewhere. Then I got my hands on an old box camera. It was simple but a definite step up. I kept taking pictures and gaining experience on making pictures more interesting. I also got ahold of a polaroid camera that could develop pictures on the spot. The problem was that back then the film was very expensive for that type of camera and it only took black and white shots at first. Later they went to color film. I used a few other cheap cameras but began to realize that getting good pictures required more than skill and creativity. It required good equipment.

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My first year in college I took a photo course. Interestingly the camera I used was a Yashica-D. It is a medium format (it used 2 1/4 inch film) twin lens reflex camera. It was rather similar to the box camera I used in my childhood. I felt at home with it. The experience was great as I learned much valuable information on how cameras work, developing film, exposing, developing and mounting prints, and much more.

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My second year in college was a turning point in my photographic journey. I saved up and bought a used Topcon 35 mm single lens reflex camera. It cost $175 (equivalent to $900 today). Topcon is now out of business but at the time it was comparable to a good Nikon camera. It had a good quality fast lens too. So this was quite a step up from the Yashica-D. My teacher liked one of my photos and so without telling me entered it into an 11-statewide college photo contest. Mine was entered into the black and white category. I ended up winning 1st place in that category and went to an awards dinner in Los Angeles received a large trophy.

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Through the years, my life took many wild turns so I didn't pursue a business in photography. However I never lost a love of photography. I always stayed busy taking pictures and trying different cameras and lenses.

 

A huge shift came with the advent of digital cameras. I started getting experience with this new format by trying different digital cameras. However they were very expensive at first and a digital single lens reflex pro camera was thousands of dollars. After saving up I got my first DSLR for $1,200. It was a Nikon D-90. In the process I learned a lot about how to process digital pictures on my computer. I took thousands of pictures and kept perfecting my skills in the process. I've upgraded my camera again and now have become adept at using a number of photo processing programs. It seems that no one program works well for every situation. I now use around 8 different programs to quickly complete my photo tasks. I may use 3 or 4 on one picture.

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So here is the deal. I offer a service to fix, enhance, repair or edit in some other way, your photo. See examples of my work.

 

I also sell prints of some of my best photos. ​