Back in pre-digital times, my father converted a bathroom in our house to a darkroom for developing film and prints, so I’ve had a camera since I was old enough to know how to use one. My early education was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but every summer my family would travel to northern Minnesota, into the Chippewa National Forest. I acquired a deep fascination and love for the forests, lakes and rivers of that area. With help from experts and experience, I learned what I needed to know to spend long periods of time in the outdoors, canoeing in both Minnesota and Ontario, Canada. In my youth, dear friends introduced me to hiking and cross-country skiing in Arizona and Colorado. My love for the outdoors expanded to include deserts and mountainous terrain.

I continued taking what I now consider to be only snapshots of scenes or items I found in the wildernesses. In the current digital era, long after I had acquired my first digital camera, I discovered how digital editing on a computer could vastly improve my photographs and I began to learn about the various aspects of image quality that make them good compositions. Now I put a lot more thought into most images before pressing the shutter button. I’ll never stop learning.