Speaking about photography and my past

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Last evening I had the pleasure of being the featured speaker at the monthly meeting of the Calliwassie Island Photography Club, in SC. meeting. They had asked me to speak about what the life of a commercial photographer is like. I presented a slide show that I had prepared and spoke and answered questions for about an hour and then helped them critique the members images from the monthly assignments. I had a great time and was told by more than one member that I was the best speaker they had ever had.

I had fun preparing the talk and thinking about the early part of my career and how I got to where I am now. I graduated from college with a degree in photography in 1980, when there really was no such thing as a personal computer. I assisted a husband and wife photographer team for three and a half years in Boston, before landing two consecutive jobs as an in-house corporate photographer for two large companies in the Boston area. I finally opened my own business in eastern NC in 1987.

Things were so different back then. Photographing with large and medium format film is such a different process and way of doing things than using the current digital technology. I used to even process my color transparency film in house, as there were no good reliable labs where I was located. Now, instead of spending hours in a darkroom processing film and printing black and white prints, I spend hours in front of a computer screen processing digital files.

However, I don’t really want to go back to the film days. I love the freedom and feedback and the capabilities of today’s digital capture devices that as a film photographer we didn’t even dream about.

 

 

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