For as long as I can remember I have always owned a camera. The first camera I owned was a Kodak Pocket Instamatic 110, I wish I still had that one. In junior high school I needed to fill one more class, so I chose “Intro to Photography” and my life changed. Watching images appear in the development tray was magical. There are still songs that I will hear, and I flashback to that darkroom (the radio was always playing in the darkroom). By high school I had converted the bathroom off my bedroom to a darkroom and spent more than a few all-nighters printing pictures.
After high school I got married, a full-time job, and photography took a back seat. Through the years I would dabble with photography, and I truly enjoyed it, but never tried to do anything other than just document our travels. Then I tried my hand at landscape oil painting and quickly realized that I didn’t know how to fill in the subtle details, so I got my camera and went out to take pictures that I could then paint. I was immediately discouraged by the images I took and set out to fix that. Well, that is how I went from photography to painting and back to photography, and I’ve never looked back.
In 2021 I decided to switch over to primarily B&W images. There are several reasons that lead to that change, but the main reason was that I was looking to get back to the basics. There is just something about a good B&W image that I truly believe color cannot match. So, for now the majority of what I do is B&W.
I feel like I have come full circle: started with B&W film, then color film, then color digital, and now back to B&W (although yes, mostly digital). What does tomorrow hold for me and my passion for photography? I have no idea and while that idea used to frustrate me, today it excites me.
I hope you enjoy my vision,
Craig