Hello,

I first really got interested in about 1971 when I purchased my Minolta SRT-101. I was still in college then, but I continued with Minoltas for a number of years until my job made me a bit tired of being behind a camera.

I spent 32 years in the school photography business as a photographer, salesman, office manager and territory manager. After taking 600 portraits a day for a week, I did not want to play with my cameras at home. But around the time I was looking to retire, I acquired a Fuji Point & Shoot type camera, and soon moved to digital. I now have four Olympus cameras I really enjoy using, although the E-500 and PL-1 are mostly backups that I leave in the storage area. I use the E-520 some, but more and more I am using my E-M1.

I get to do volunteer photography for America On Wheels museum for their Facebook page, and some of these recently made Hemming's Daily. I also take way too many photos of my family, and our travels.

I hope to learn and become a better photographer from this group.

Dave Reese
Lehigh Valley PA
www.flickr.com/photos/brooklands/albums

Well, we have another here with actual experience! Welcome aboard! I have never don't anything remotely professional with photography and really only got into it (with film originally) to pass the time while os a remote assignment in Greece. Wandering around the islands snapping pictures made the days go by much faster. It's only been the past couple of years that I've really decided I want to get better and it.

Welcome aboard and be gentle with those of us who are squarely in the amateur corner!

My "professional" photography was clearly of the M*A*S*H unit type where we did volume and not really trained. I actually taught my boss and coworkers about f-stops and depth of field and such in my second year as the cameras we used on the jobs were fixed focus and we used a knotted string to keep the subject in the proper range. We also had strings on the lights to make sure they were in the proper distance from our subjects so that the lab could get an average reading from the film and print all the photograph pages without further adjustments. Creativity and experimentation where frowned upon sternly.

Welcome aboard.

I understand the reason behind that, but it would have driven me crazy.

I took the job thinking I was going to get another degree and become a school teacher, but I found that I enjoyed being with the kids and I did not have be the disciplinarian. It was not really a photography job and I lost all interest in photography for years. It was only when I remarried and had kids that I wanted to take pictures again. And at that time digital was just coming into its own. So I even kept a Bronica ETRS when I retired, and I have not used it in the 11 years I have had it as a personal camera. We had used them for sports photography in the business, but by that time I was mostly in a management position, and not spending much time on the camera on the job.

Hiya Dave! Didn't know you were a "kidnapper" too. Welcome aboard.

Thanks Doc,

Yep, I had a career with National School Studios when I started in 1973, and Lifetouch by the time I retired in 2005. Same company, but it changed a lot during my tenure, but then so did schools over that same period.

My experience with the school pix was with an outfit named Bell Foto Labs. Had schools in a 100-mile radius from the lab. The schools were everything from the "one-room school house" in rural PA/WV/OH to K-12 with 700 heads a day. Quite the experience. With the larger schools, there was no room for deviation if you were to stay on schedule!"Line 'em up, smallest to tallest!"

Learned I had to be a bit of a clown, too.