My Story
Hi, I’m Mike. Photography has been a my life long passion. I am retired now after a couple of careers working in a hospital lab and in IT. My passion for photography started with a small Kodak Instamatic 104 camera. However, before that camera I would play with my Mother’s old Kodak Holiday camera. It took 127 roll film, providing 8 shots per roll of film.
Later, during my time with the U.S. Army, I picked up a Canon TLb, my first serious camera. That camera served me well and was my main tool while taking photography classes in college after the Army. Then as they say, life got complicated and in the way. That camera found a new home and after a few years, I picked up a Canon AT-1 35mm, then later a ‘professional’ Canon F1n. I thought they were great. Did not make my photos any better but they were nice to use.
Another long pause away from photography and in the process of building a new house, I set about building a darkroom. I had missed working in the darkroom from those college days and set up a space dedicated to photography. From 35mm film, the next step was to medium format. I played with a few roll film cameras and enjoyed the larger negatives. Next phase was with large format photography. That was a major leap in working with film, darkroom processing, just about everything. Got started on a serious project, The Texas Church project, that eventually include four other photographers. We set out to photograph as many 100 year old churches as we could find. The reason 100 year old churches? That was easy, I found a 100 year old Kodak 5×7 camera and the two seemed to be a perfect match. We traveled around the state photographing the locations we found. Sometimes as a group and other times by ourselves, since we were spread over different parts of the state. We had a few shows, the first at the University of North Texas. Most of the work I did during this time was printed in platinum and palladium. There were some that given the gum over palladium treatment, which produced a very nice contact print.
And as with many projects, it slowly faded away. I will always be grateful for that project and the guys I worked with. They taught me a lot. Work life took on it’s own demands and photography took a backseat once again.
Today, I’m retired and have been enjoying time to photograph new subjects. I have always been fascinated with two subjects – the night sky and storms, so those two command a great deal of my photography outings. I can’t say I am a storm chaser, more a storm photographer. I have encountered tornados but they are not really what drives my trips. Cloud structure is what I really enjoy and just being out to experience the pure power of mother nature. The night sky has always had it’s draw since I was a kid (I still am a kid in many ways). Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s it was common to see the Milky Way at night, unlike today when I have to drive miles away from population centers to just see it. Also, when you grow up and recall seeing Sputnik in the sky and then all the other satellites that followed you spent a lot of time looking at the night sky.
Today, some health issues keep me from traveling as much as I want to, but anytime I can I get out to see a storm or just enjoy the night sky. Storm chasing requires about 99% of your time behind the wheel of a car for that 1% of enjoying and photographing what Nature has to offer.
