For a 1951 summer family trip from Iowa to the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone Park, Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands, and Estes Park, my parents gave me my first camera, a Kodak Brownie (b/w prints). Later, a Kodak Instamatic (color prints) was used through high school, college, and graduate school. 


Completing graduate school in 1971 (chemistry Ph.D.), my parents gifted me a 35 mm SRL Mamiya Sekor camera (color slides). As a U.S. Air Force Exchange Scientist to a southwestern German research institute from 1978-80, my wife Marilyn gave me a 35 mm SRL Canon AE-1 camera Christmas gift (color slides) when we lived in a small, agrarian German village (pop. 1200 - founded in 778 AD), where with two young daughters, we were the first American family ever to reside. It also documented our excursions around Western Europe and over the next 30 years in the USA, including a community college photography course (color slides), and three years when we lived in a village near London, England (1984-87), and traveled in Western Europe and Israel. 


Entrance into digital photography came suddenly when Marilyn gave me a 3.4 MB Sony digital camera the night to photograph a family Thanksgiving gathering in 2000. In 2003, she surprised me with the 6.1 MP Nikon D-40 SRL digital camera, in 2014, a 24.7 MP Nikon D-3200, and in 20xx a Panasonic DMC-FZ1000. Marilyn also gave me an awesome PowerSlide 5000 color slide-to-digital photo converter. In 2010 I retired from 41 years as a research chemist.

MEMBER GALLERIES: USA | CANADA | INTERNATIONAL