My Photographic Journey

Anyone that knows my family knows also that my mum is the family shutterbug. From a Kodak 110 to a 35mm Canon SureShot to a digital Canon PowerShot SD550, she's been chronicling the family in photos for as long as I can remember and then some. Of my parents, she has the more pronounced artistic bent. So between the creative flare and the photographic habit, I come about my interest in photography almost genetically.

I remember taking my parents' 35mm Minolta rangefinder to a Washington, D.C. scholarship trip in 1988 where I took a photo of the Vietnam Memorial wall reflecting the Washington Monument. I thought it was very artistic and interesting. While I may have had an interest in photography before that, that one photo was probably my first realization that photography was more than just a means of keeping a visual record of people and events: it was a creative medium of communication to be explored.

In the summer of 1994, I traveled to New England and worked on a six-person evangelism team, performing music, drama and panotmime while assisting area churches with their outreach programs. One day during a week in Wallingford, Connecticut, my team took a day excursion into New York City. To my dismay, I had no camera at all for that trip. I walked around NYC all day, lamenting my photographic deficiency. Within a week, I purchased The Photographer's Handbook by John Hedgecoe, and started learning about the finer points of photography in anticipation of purchasing my first "real" camera.

The following year, Canon introduced the Elan IIe 35mm SLR. Some time in 1995 or 1996, I bought one and started learning how to take better photographs – mostly, I believe, by trial and error. I still utilize that method (trial and error) in my photography today.

After a couple of years of shooting the Elan IIe, I discovered my close friends who were fellow photo ethusiasts used Nikon. They each had their own selection of lenses — none of which I could use. So I made the switch to Nikon, selling my Canon and upgrading to a more professional-level Nikon N90s. After ten years with that camera body, I made the jump to digital SLRs, landing with the Nikon D300.

My Nikon equipment can be seen here.