Introducing Myself

I have been a photographer all of my life. When I was in high school I took photography classes every year. I never intended to make photography a career, I just enjoyed it, particularly working in the dark room. I became serious about improving my photographic abilities when in 2004, my wife (Wicca) bought me my first DSLR, a Nikon D70. One of the first things I did was to join the North Bethesda Camera Club. I have been an active member of that camera club ever since. It is worth noting that I have always been a Nikon shooter (except for a short traitorous departure which I will talk about next).

Wicca and I had planned a trip to Europe in the Fall of 2019. We were going to visit friends who lived in France, and then we were going on a 2-week cruise to Italy and the Greek Islands. On the very first day of this exciting trip, we were taking a train from Paris to the city of Saumur in the Loire Valley. This is where our friends lived. Well, sometime during that train ride my back pack was stolen. All of my camera gear was in that back pack. It was a devastating loss. It ruined most of my photographic plans for this trip. Wicca had her camera, a Nikon D90, stored elsewhere and she let me use her camera throughout the trip. Wicca resorted to using her phone’s camera for all of her photography. That worked, sort of, but it was a far cry from what I had planned.

When we got home I needed to buy new camera gear. This was a time when photography was transitioning from digital single lens reflex cameras to mirrorless cameras. Mirrorless cameras offered the advantage of being much smaller and lighter than equivalent DSLR’s. I’m not getting any younger and a lighter camera seemed very appealing. All of the camera companies were offering mirrorless cameras, but Nikon’s early entries into the mirrorless world were not getting favorable reviews. After careful thought and research I chose to go with Olympus. I bought an Olympus OM-D EM-1 Mark II. That was the top-of-the-line Olympus mirrorless camera at the time. Well, I was never happy with that camera. In particular, I was never satisfied with images taken in low light. I do a lot of night time photography and I was never happy with the quality of night time images taken with this camera. But, I lived with it for 3 years. I was so dissatisfied with my low light photos that I became disillusioned and started backing away from doing photography altogether.

Eventually I realized that enough was enough. I needed to get back into camera gear that I knew and loved. I had been lusting after a Nikon D850 ever since they were introduced in 2017. So, in December 2022 I bought a lightly used Nikon D850 and three professional lenses for the camera. I managed to sell my Olympus gear on eBay, and even made more money on the sale than I was expecting.

I have only had this new camera gear a short time, but I am so much happier with my photographs again. This is a sad story with a happy ending…