I spent my early years moving around a lot because of my father’s job but we finally planted roots in Burlington, NC. My life as a child was pretty typical. I graduated high school, went off to college and hated it. Quit college and went to work for my father and that was enough to drive me back to school. I attented Western Carolina University for four more years, as well as that first year, and got my degree in Chemistry of all things.

From an early age, I have had one camera or another.  The first camera I remember back when I was 5 or 6 was a Kodak box camera.  I still have some of the pictures I took with it.  My mom was a big shutterbug so you could say she had a strong influence on me in that regard.  Although she never took any professional classes, she had a good photographic sense.  Her pictures were always above par.  Continuing…

I am not a chemist though.  Two weeks before I graduated, I exploded my senior project and decided at that point, while I was covered in crown ether, that there was no way in God’s green earth, that I would ever be a chemist.  Luckily, even though my father drove me back to school, I continued to work for him all those years.  So after I graduated on Saturday, Monday morning I went to work for him full time.  Unfortunately, unscrupulous clients and the Gulf War did a number on us and we had to shut the doors to the company on January 1, 1991.  So out into the real work force I go.

All the while, I was still taking pictures.  Until 1991, I always had a camera.  Either my mom bought one for me or I would get her hand me downs.  I remember my 110 camera that I took to the World’s Fair in 1982 (I think) in Knoxville, TN.  Then I got a Minolta 35mm SLR and used that for a while in full auto because I had no idea what all those silly settings were for.  Just a waste of time, or so I thought.

Then in 1991, I went on a Caribbean cruise with a buddy of mine and decided to get a new camera, a Canon Rebel.  I really liked the camera except for one EXTREMELY annoying feature; it did not cut off automatically.  So every time I took a picture, I had to replace the battery because I had left the stupid thing on the last time I used it.  And the batteries then were $10 a pop.  Man that was aggravating.   Anyway, it still had all those stupid settings and I had to look in the manual to find that perfect setting: full auto.  “P”, there it is.

I used it until 2 years ago when I upgraded to a Canon XTi 400D.  They had what I thought was a pretty good deal on one at Circuit City on Black Friday (I had been eyeballing the new digital lines for a while).  I didn’t intend on buying one but when you are sitting in the freaking cold on cold cement for 6 hours, you tend to read the sales flier over and over (maybe that’s part of the ploy, hummm) and there it was.  So I stood an additional 3 hours on line to buy it.  I liked it very much because now I can see my pictures as soon as I took them.  AND the “P” was still there.  Didn’t even need to open the manual except to figure out how to view the pictures on the card.

Then starting in January, 2009, I took two classes as the local community college, Photography 101 and Creative Photography, both taught by David Huffines.  First thing he said, “NEVER USE ‘P’ AGAIN.  IT IS FOR PICTURE TAKERS NOT PHOTOGRAPHERS.” And he taught us how to be photographers.  He was right.  After taking the classes, I have never used “P” again and never will.  What a difference.

Anyway, I wanted to include a couple of pictures that I took of my parents (now that I am a professional and all, hehehe).  They had not had their pictures taken in a long time and they asked me to take some. So I did and wanted to post them here.

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