Going Digital - setting the scene

My first Nikon SLR purchase was to celebrate a good year at IBM and to get plenty of photos of my new born first daughter, back in the mid 70's. The investments in hardware spurred the need to read some photography books and even to go to the Nikon Class that came to your local city once a year. This quickly became my favorite hobby.

The downside was the cost of film and developing. To counter this, I switched to slide film which bypassed the cost of printing everything. Of course this led to a need for a loupe, slide viewer, a light table, a projector and a screen to enjoy the slides - but these were "one time expenditures." I learned that the challenge of slide film was to get the photo right the first time because it was not as forgiving as print film. It was particularly sensitive to getting the exposure right.

The satisfaction of saving money on prints with slide film was just the tip of the iceberg. It was a small step to buy a little bit of equipment and chemicals to do my own slide film developing. One of the accessories was the changing bag. It looked like a black T-shirt, but with no opening for the head and a zipper / velcro closure at the bottom. This lets you put your exposed film canister, a developing reel, and a developing tank inside the changing bag. Remove the film from the canister, wrap it around the reel and insert the reel in the tank.

The developing could be done in a lighted room since the developing tank was light proof, but let you add and remove the chemicals. This was simpler and cheaper than building a dark room to develop your own film. The other advantage of developing in a lighted room allowed me to process the film while I watched Monday Night Football. After the slides were developed, I got to cut each slide and mount it. Even with some multitasking with TV viewing, I was trading my time for lower costs.

My hobby grew in importance and faster than my budget, so the next step was to purchase slide film in bulk and to load my own film cannisters. This required a bulk loader, the changing bag and re-usable film cannistes. By now I was taking an enormous number of photos, over 3,000 per year. I started buying slide mounts a few hundred at a time. All this made the cost per photo go down, although it required investment in equipment and time.

This approach worked for me for years.


More about the "Going Digital" journey next week.

Welcome to my blog

As an introduction to my blog, I want to introduce you to the true inspiration for my passion for photography, my family. In later blogs, you can get a feel for my approach and development as a professional photographer.

Here's one of the few photos you'll see on this blog that was not taken by me. This one was a highlight of my photography career and a personal one at the same time. That's me on the left, flanked to the right by my lovely wife and business partner, Kathy, my national champion daughter Michelle, and her terrific husband, Pete.

After shooting Michelle playing rugby for over ten years, her team took their place in history. Her NY Rugby club's womens won team the US national championship last November, breaking the Berkeley, CA "All Blues" nine year winning streak. I was honored to be the photographer of choice (as supported by the published photos) for the final four at Disney's Wide World of Sports. You can see the game and celebration photos at www.trulyunforgettable.com.
This photo captures the inspiration for my photography.


My daughters, Lauren and Kathleen, played on teams that set college records in their respective schools for lacrosse and softball. They are accompanied by my oldest daughter, Krista, who is a talented music teacher and performer, and proud mom of our two grandchildren. She started the inspiration with the first, best and most years as a performer in the family. Now, my son, Rob, has begun to challenge her as his band just completed their first concert tour along the east coast. Check out "Mook" on My Space for band info and iTunes for their music. My wife also adds to the inspiration with her choral groups' performances.

After decades of capturing the highlights of my family's competitions and performances, the opportunity to offer the same satisfactions to a wider clientèle has been too appealing to ignore.