 |
|
I'm a professional systems developer and amateur photographer. Growing up in Oklahoma, I enjoyed the plains and particularly the thunderstorms in spring and summer. I also spent a lot of time fishing and hunting with my dad. After a four year tour in the Marines, I enrolled as a physics major at the University of Oklahoma. However, I discovered philosophy and classics there in my freshman year and ended up graduating with a Letters degree. The philosophy courses, in particular symbolic logic, led to programming courses in my senior year and once I started I was hooked. I've been doing systems and software development ever since, for nearly thirty five years now. I still enjoy it.
My interest in photography developed only recently. I took it up mainly to photograph the birds that I'd been watching at Cherry Creek Reservoir in Aurora, Colorado for several decades. While I still enjoy avian photography, I've discovered a broader based interest in photography in general. I started shooting flora while I was waiting for birds to land and like programming, discovered that I enjoyed it.
In particular, I enjoy trying to convey mood through my work and that's how I measure the success of my own images. I also enjoy using and studying imaging software. I took my first digital imaging course nearly twenty years ago at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, many years before I started photography, and it's been fascinating to me to watch the software and technology evolve.
Most of my favorite photographers post regularly here on NPN. Others include Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, Howard Bond and Robert Maplethorpe. I think it's fair to say that I'm an NPN trained photographer - first with Nate Chappell and the folks in the Avian Gallery and then with Bill Fach and the Florans, and most recently with David Kelly and Cindy Mead in the Photo Art gallery. While I do routinely read and study photography, that study doesn't begin to approach the benefit I've received in the galleries from the moderators and other members. Consequently, I'm very pleased and also very humbled to be able to pay some of that back if possible and serve as a co-moderator with Bill in the Flora gallery.
I live in Aurora, Colorado with my wife of forty years, Terri (who is also a developing photographer and my best critic). We both enjoy the Colorado mountains and the birds at Cherry Creek Reservoir but still prefer the plains and watching the thunderstorms in the Eastern part of the state, particularly the Pawnee National Grasslands - our favorite open space.