In the beginning….

It may seem illogical to start a blog titled in the middle of things at a beginning, but I have too many proverbial irons in the fire and I am anxious to get this started.  A residual side effect is it may well serve as motivation to stop all my procrastinating and get my personal projects started, and what a concept, perhaps even finish one!  However, does one ever really finish projects deemed personal journeys or reflection?  I’ll give it my best shot at any rate.

With every passing year, seems I get misty eyed about my past, and increasingly neurotic about what the future may hold.  Do you remember lying on your back as a child, gazing at the millions of stars and wondering how on Earth did all this come to exist and where do I belong in the midst of such things?  I guess that’s what I am attempting to answer; where am I and how did I get here.  Some questions I have found the answers and I can spout off my conjecture without even blinking.  Photography, or more accurately, my love of, is one of those things I can recall the moment in which I started an affair which I knew would last a lifetime. 

I will fast forward past the childhood ventures with my mother’s little Kodak 110 camera.  The bicycle rides around the neighborhood snapping the shutter at things I found intriguing or beautiful.  I wish I had the tangible artifacts of those exploits, but alas, we never developed any of the film.  So now all that remains of my attempt to capture my environment or whatever fleeting thing my youthful mind tried to hold onto are my memories.

I obtained my first SLR in 1993, a gift from a friend who acquired it from a government surplus sale.  A serious chunk of metal, Nikon F3, issued to some unknown US Marine photojournalist.  I was so fascinated, and miserably lost!  I checked out a copy of John Hedgecoe’s Book of Photography from the local library and read voraciously, trying desperately to grasp all the technical and aesthetic rules and processes.  For the record, I’m still trying to grasp it all!  My next mission was to buy a lens for the camera and learn how to turn the camera on and use it.

Once I received an owner’s manual and a 28mm lens, I couldn’t wait to start an exciting new journey.  I lived and worked in Georgia at the time, a night job delivering newspapers to rural towns in the SW region of the state.  I would finish my route, drive to locations that caught my attention, and sleep by the side of the road, waiting for the sun to come up.  There was a strange exhilaration in being so bold and adventurous, sometimes a little scary.  Armed with a cheap tripod and a roll of Kodachrome, I was unstoppable.  Life and adult responsibilities have a way of changing such things, so my Nikon was relegated to an empty shoebox in the corner of a closet, gathering dust.

Everything changed when my youngest daughter signed up for photography in her freshman year of high school.  Having to be an active participant in her earlier photographic forays, my love for the art was rekindled.  She taught me how to make b&w prints in the darkroom and develop my own film.  (More on this later)  I’ve been, in her words, a photo nerd ever since.

Without further ado, these are the very first images I took with my Nikon.   Welcome to my nonsensical ramblings!