I just wanted to post a tribute to my friend John Dittrich. Many of you know John under his nickname "Zertie." He used to post regularly until earlier this year. Unbenounced to me, he had a very aggressive form of Melanoma that spread to the rest of his system. He didn't tell any of his photography friends that he was sick. He was called back to God November 23rd, 2007.
He was a sweet, terribly funny, incredibly talented man...and there is a void out there in the world with him gone. I met him back in 2003 on another photography forum. I will always be grateful for his friendship, his humor, and his "outsider" insight into photography that I will miss so very much.
He had a funny line for everything... By posting this self portrait of his, I kinda feel like I'm pulling the curtain back on the wizard, but I believe he deserves true credit where its due.
Godspeed John.

Soon I'll be moving from southern California to Northern Neveda.Trading palm trees for pine trees,rain for snow storms.LOL Although I enjoy the southwest I'm happy to be getting back up to the mountains of the sierra's. I'll miss the beautiful sunsets and the mild winters here.
I enjoy going out with my camera just before the sun sets on a cloudy day and capturing storm clouds breaking. Here's one of my favorites from last week.I liked the deep blue sky in back of the ominous dark storm clouds coming in as the sun sets.

Years ago, back in the "ancient" film days, I had a darkroom outfitted with blackout windows, a dichroic (color) enlarger, a huge sink for rinsing prints, and lots of very smelly chemicals.

Well, times have changed. Now that same room is no longer in darkness and all the chemical fumes have finally dissipated. In their place is the faint hum of hard drives and the glow of flat panel displays.

I've just recently upgraded the system, added more hard drive space, and can gaze into 525 square inches of flat panel color instead of peering at a faint projected image in near darkness. It's digital darkroom nirvana!

For the techies reading this, here's a brief rundown of the setup:

HP Tower PC with Intel Quad Core CPU and 4GB DDR2 memory, (3) SATA hard drives (RAID0, 1.5 Terabytes), Dual Samsung SyncMaster LCD displays (27" and 19", landscape + portrait), plus two HP servers on a LAN with another Terabyte of drive space.

Sure beats that old darkroom...

Taken the winter of '94. Cold cold cold! I had an assignment for a 2D design class, and needed some shots. My friend and I went out to the railroad yards one cold day and promptly got kicked out.
Luckily, my Dad's best friend worked for the railroad for many years and retired with them. He knew everybody. He escorted me back to the yard, where I got every picture I needed without a hassle. We kept on having to go back to the car and warm up, then come out and shoot again. I thought my shutter was going to freeze.
This was taken with my Canon AE-1.

Set your time machine back to the tumultuous late 60's (yes, I'm dating myself). I was just entering high school and had saved enough money doing odd jobs around the neighborhood to afford my very first SLR, a Mamiya-Sekor 1000DTL.

The camera with a 50mm lens cost around $300 back then, and it was a big step up from the Kodak box camera I played with as a kid. Though not quite a Nikon, the Mamiya Sekor was nevertheless state-of-the-art at the time, with dual metering (spot and average), self-timer, and other advanced features.

I shot exclusively B&W film back then (usually Plus-X and Tri-X), developed the negatives myself, then printed with an ancient Beseler enlarger. To save money, I bought 100 ft. rolls of film and rolled my own cartridges (called bulk-film loading), getting several hundred shots for just a few bucks.

While not actually my first 35mm photo, here's a very early shot scanned from an over 35 year-old negative I found in a file box. I remember printing this at 8x10 and enjoying the "prickly" look of the cactus.

Hey fellow PixArtWeb members, why not share some of your earliest photos and give us a little history?