(embiggenable) • µ4/3
(embiggenable) • µ4/3 (left), iPhone (right)
I have always had a fascination with visual complexity. In fact, it is quite accurate to write that that fascination lead directly to my career as a professional commercial photographer.
Stepping into the Way Back Machine to 1966, while I was living in Japan (in the military), I acquired my first camera. This acquisition was notable inasmuch as, while I was living Rochester, NY-home of the Big Yellow Box aka: KODAK-I never (with one exception) made a photograph. My artistic activities were devoted to creating drawings and illustrations for which I was well known.
That written, with that first camera I took to picture making like the proverbial duck to water.
Within a few months, I had won 3 1st place military photo competitions-3 different categories-at each of 3 different levels - base, Far East and Pacific tiers. A few months after that, I became a military photographer. Eventually, I became the personal photographer to a Commanding General.
In a very real sense, I had become a professional photographer inasmuch as I was earning my military pay by making pictures. That,dispite the fact that I had zero photo education or training ... as I wrote, like a duck to water.
Upon my discharge, I returned to Rochester-loaded up with 2 Nikons and 5 NIkkor lenses-and enrolled in a 4 year photography program at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I dropped out after 2 months due the fact that the school would not give me any credits for my prior photographic experience which resulted in my being placed inclasses with rank begginers and the attendant courses of study. It didn't seem worth the money.
I then got a job as an assitant to a commercial photographer where I worked for 3 years. I left that job and opened my first commercial studio.
And the rest was, as they say, history.