Gary Field's History in Photography - Another generation of photographer

I've been at this craft for over 45 years. I first got interested when I was at Northeastern University in 1972. I took an elective course called "History of photography" which peaked my interest. My father and grandfather had both been amateur photographers as well, so it seemed like the thing to do.

I went out and bought a Hanimex Practika SLR (chosen because it was less expensive than a Pentax, but was compatible with Pentax lenses). Within a year I found out why it was less expensive when the shutter stuck open. Then I bought myself what I had really wanted, a Pentax Spotmatic II. I collected a nice set of lenses for it too.

Being a geek, one of my strongest interests was in darkroom work. There had always been a darkroom in my parents cellar, even though my father only rarely used it. I revamped it and moved in.
I developed all my own film and made enlargements up to 16 x 20 with an Omega B22XL. I even processed my own color slides and prints using the Unicolor process. I also built my own enlargement light meter to determine exposures in addition to a electronic timer from Heathkit. I studied the Kodak technical spec's on their films and chemicals and tried many different ones, black and white, color, and even Infra Red.

I won first prize the Northeastern University annual photo contest in 1973! (with this portrait)

I've tried about every subject from micro-photography of bacteria to astro-photography of stars, comets and eclipses. Everything interests me. That's always been one of my weaknesses. :-)

The Digital Transformation...
I've tried to keep all the negatives I've shot filed properly, but it gets pretty tough after so many years. :-)
I'm trying to get around to scanning them all in and indexing them all in a database.

The advent of digital photography really excited me, since this was my chance to get control of my pictures again!
Darkroom? I don't need no stinkin' darkroom! I'll do it all in my PC. It took many years, but I have finally pretty mastered Photoshop!
I think one could make it their life's work!

I started with an Olympus C2100 2.1 Megapixel with 10x optical zoom (non-interchangeable lens however). That was great for a couple years, but when the 6 Megapixel Canon Digital Rebel came out in the Fall of 2003, I just had to have one. Finally a digital camera with interchangeable lenses! So I bought a Canon 75-300 mm Image Stabilized zoom so I could do decent nature shots again!

My upgrade to the 12 Megapixel Canon Digital Rebel Xsi/450D in 2008 was a big step forward!

I have made a major investment in studio lighting equipment to produce truly professional quality images.

I constantly strive to keep my skills and my equipment at the state of the art!

To keep up with the huge number of images I now shoot, I use three 12 TB NAS storage boxes with RAID5 for data security and backup.

Adobe Lightroom completes the workslow and allows me to find any of my over 300,000 images in seconds.