My Photography Journey

Photography has been my passion for a very long time. I’ve been practicing the “Art of Seeing”for most of my adult life, ever since I first moved to the mountains when I was 23.

That first SLR was a Minolta SRT-201. I LOVED that camera, so much that I bought the exact same model when the first body wore out. That Minolta was my inseparable companion for 25 years. It documented countless adventures, seasons spent in the Colorado Rockies, the Colorado Plateau, the Sierras, Denali. Hawaii and New Zealand.

Photography was my zen, my meditation, my passion. To be still, observe, practice the art of seeing. I don’t know who first came up with that term to describe photography. I think it was David Muench. But to me, the phrase defines perfectly the role photography has played in my life.

I’m auto-didactic. I tend to try to learn everything through the school of hard knocks, and photography was no different. I was an avid reader of Outdoor Photographer magazine. I studied the work of photographers I greatly admired – Eliott Porter, Galen Rowell, and David Muench to name a few. I did attend a couple of workshops through Colorado Mountain College. I read a few books. I even took a mail-order course, but dropped it halfway through as I had no desire to do studio work.

I wish I had the pix from my Minolta to share with you. A lifetime of beauty. Alas, I am in temporary winter quarters and all my analog work is either home in McCarthy or in my sister’s garage in Colorado. I did find a scant handful of poor-quality scans stored on an SD card that will have to do.

Here’s the disclaimer, though. The original slides are SO much sharper, cleaner and have way better color balance. I really wish I could show you what that old Minolta was capable of.

It was good stuff. Good enough that people urged me to sell my work. So I did, on a small scale. I was co-owner of an art co-op in Colorado, selling prints and notecards, for a couple of years.

When I started selling my work, I upgraded. Although the Minolta was still my main squeeze, I acquired a used Pentax 645 medium format camera.

The Pentax took beautiful pictures, but the film was expensive and the camera was heavy. I took it out for special occasions but not often. I wish I had some of those images to share with you, too, but I don’t.

The art co-op didn’t last, and when it went down the tubes, I decided to go back to Alaska and ended up in Kennecott. The tiny ghost town was so unknown then that I would tell Alaskans where I was working for the summer and even they said “Where’s that?”

There was only one postcard of the place, and it was a terrible shot. All the visitors asked, “When are you going to get some decent postcards?” I told them “Next year.”

I put my life savings, all $4000 of it , into the gamble. I started Wrangell Mountain Scenics, selling postcards, notecards and prints throughout the Copper River Valley, some taken with the Minolta, some with the 645.

I eventually reached a plateau with my business. I needed to step it up a notch if I wanted to take it from a good part-time gig to a profession. And an essential part of stepping it up was to have internet access so I could run a business online. McCarthy was still way too remote for internet service at that time, and I was living there year-round then.

I wasn’t willing to give up McCarthy, so I back-burnered photography and concentrated on being a ranger. I put all my money into land and building a house. I had to make a conscious choice – try to take my photography to the next level and spend a couple of thousand dollars on a professional-grade digital camera, or build a house. I couldn’t afford both. I chose to spend the money on boards.

I started working winters in Death Valley to earn money to build my house with. I had a fabulous new landscape to explore, and I desperately needed a digital camera. I couldn’t be satisfied with a plain old point-and-shoot given my background. I needed some control over what I was shooting, but I couldn’t afford a good DSLR, so I gravitated over to high-end point-and-shoots as a compromise.

Since I was no longer trying to sell my work, I was pretty happy with these top of the line point-and-shoots, apart from occasional frustrations. I’ve owned both Nikons and Panasonic Lumixs. I do love how light they are, after lugging a heavy fanny pack full of gear everywhere for half my life. Sometimes, though, you need better control and better lenses.

During the 2016 Death Valley superbloom event, I was the park’s main flower lady. I wrote blog posts for the park website and provided photos I took on my days off. The photos became public domain, but I got a credit line.

About a year later, my superbloom photos caught the eye of an interior designer. She wanted to feature some of my work in a redesign she was doing for a  hotel in the park. She asked if I had other images like the one she had seen and saved. I sold her some images. I was concerned about quality, since they weren’t taken with a “real” camera, but we made them work and I started thinking about getting back into the photography game.

I eventually purchased a Nikon D7100. I’ve had it for a couple of years now and still can’t use it right. Too many bells and whistles. I probably should have gotten something simpler, more like my old Minolta, but I decided to go big.

I’m taking tutorials right now, both in Lightroom and on my Nikon. There’s so much to learn. I definitely am feeling my age, and my lack of tech savvy. But I am absolutely loving learning more about digital processing, following the art of seeing with the art of painting with light.

I wish I had a coach, like Patti of P.A. Moed has, someone to look at my work with a sharp but kind critic’s eye and let me know what works and what doesn’t, and offer tips and tricks on how to improve. I have so much to learn! Sometimes I feel overwhelmed.

But it’s not the destination, it’s the journey. Through all the hills and valleys, I’m loving the journey. Where will the next fork in the road take me?

Thank you, Amy of The World is a Book, for this week’s Lens-Artists Photography Challenge – My Photography Journey.