Ed's Journey
My interest in photography began around my 12th birthday when I got my first Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera. I imagined myself as a newspaper reporter, taking photos of things in the neighborhood; friends, statues, trees, the park, and architecture, whatever captured my eye. Processing was by Macy's photo department, which only took two weeks before I was able to see the results of my efforts!
Years later I graduated to my first SLR camera, a Canon TLb. This time, photo processing was by mail order. They were cheaper than Macy's, but still took almost two weeks to get them back. I wanted more, faster, better. The only way to do this was to do the processing myself. I can remember carrying trays of chemicals from the bathroom to my "darkroom" bedroom. Imagine my excitement seeing the image appear in the developer tray, as if by magic, under the red-amber safelight. I was hooked.
Enter the world of digital photography... the year was about 2000 when I purchased my first digital camera, the 1.2 megapixel Olympus 2020. Instant photography, instant feedback. What can be better than that? My fully equipped large format darkroom was soon to be relegated to become the new walk-in closet—still with its temperature controlled water supply!
Years later, I moved to the Canon 30d, then to the Canon 5d Mark IV, the Fujifilm X-100F, and finally to my all time favorite, the Fujifilm X-100vi. It's funny how things change, yet still stay the same. I'm still photographing things in the neighborhood, friends, trees, statues, the park and architecture... whatever I think would be interesting. This time around, it's project oriented, with a sharper artistic eye, international in scope, and with an immensely broader sense of design and maturity than when I started.
Enjoy!
Bio
Ed has served as an Art Director for an international firm; is now a retired visual communication, marketing, and business executive; has taught photographic aesthetics, darkroom, and digital techniques; has an extensive collection of rare and contemporary photography books; is a fine art photo collector; has his music performance photographs represented by the Dalle Photo Agency, Paris; has photos within the Library of Congress’ Historic American Building Survey and Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER) collection; has been published in newsletters, magazines, blogs, and online tutorials; and has had his photos exhibited in numerous art galleries in the Washington, DC area. He lives in Maryland with his husband and two cats.