The photo bug bit me hard again when I was in my last year of graduate school at Iowa State in 1973. Having completed all my prescribed courses, the Army said I needed to stay in school another semester because it was not my time to "move", so I was told to find something to fill my schedule. Thus, Fundamentals of Photography was one of my choices. That was a great class. Essentially, they assigned us each a Yashica Twin Lens Reflex B&W film camera, gave us a few weeks of classroom instruction and told us to go work...making photos all over campus or where ever, developing numerous rolls of film we shot in the darkroom...and then selecting our best prints for a photo essay about some subject, which would form the major portion of our grade. My essay was about Dugan's Deli, a local hangout all us Army students went to when we needed a stress reliever, usually every Friday afternoon. I got an "A".
After grad school, I stopped using my cameras again...and what a mistake that was, because we had a couple of tours to Germany and I saw all kinds of scenes I never recorded. Then, I retired from active duty, and eventually in 2002 I got hooked again on a top-notch Nikon single lens reflex (SLR) film camera. In 2004 I converted to my first Nikon digital SLR, and I have charged ahead full speed since, to where I am today. I have three "serious" digital cameras...one Nikon, one Canon and one Panasonic. I use them each several times a month, and my collection of photos has grown considerably, most residing on my computer's hard drive and other external hard drives. Favorites have been framed and printed, and our refrigerator door is a common display gallery of my work.
So, my hobby has taken me a long way, and in some respects I just let it happen. The neat thing about this, is that when I decide it's time to "retire-retire", I'll have something to keep me busy, happy and satisfied. If you would like to see some of what I do, I invite you to visit my photoblog. Yep, I had to get a commercial in here no matter what.
