Part-time college student at 57 years, professional photographer and graphic designer. Boy, has my life been a winding road!

Update, May 4, 2014.

This graph shows the number of views to my profile page only:

About Me?

Whenever we start a new blog, or register at a photo-sharing site, one of the first items in the form asks for a synopsis of your life, as you see it. I tend to cringe at this, because when you’ve been on this earth for over 50 years like me, this always seems a tall order to fill. The answers tend to change depending on the date, but here is that synopsis, a view of “me” by “me,” that I will use as a template from now on. Or at least, until I change it.

I live way outside the Beltway and over a few mountains to the northwest of DC. That hot breeze from Washington still manages to scale the peaks most of the time. I'm a conservative Republican amongst gaggles of bleeding-heart Democrats, most of whom I'm proud to call friends. I’m a small-town boy who lived in the city, and a city boy who moved to the small town.

I'm a husband, and a father of five. I love my wife, and she loves me. I'm a frustrated artist among a sea of frustrated blue-collars. I'm an underpaid design engineer. I'm a hillbilly, but I'm metropolitan. I'm a photographer with outrageously expensive equipment. I'm usually broke.

I'm a vegan at heart, but not in practice. I've bought the best food for my dog, with only enough money left for a box of cereal for myself. I have four cats and a large dog. I talk to the animals, and the animals love me back. I believe in hunting as sport for those who like it, but I don't hunt. I can't bring myself to kill anything.

I love our national traditions, yet I embrace change. I am stubborn as a mule, yet yielding as a sheep. I love our kids enough to dole out discipline, but not corporal discipline. I'm not touchy-feely, but my emotions run deep. I'm a geek. I'm a redneck. I'm a thinker when I don't feel like being shallow.

I’m a very private man who makes most of his thoughts public. I am a very public man who yearns for privacy. I am technically oriented, but yearn to get back to the basics.

I'm a sinner. I'm a forgiver. I am fascinated by Jewish history. My ancestors, however, were Celts. I am a man of contradictions and convictions—and maybe sometimes apathy.

What does all this make me? It makes me human. Just like the rest of you.

--Dixon Marshall, October 2008

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Edit, Monday, September 8, 2008:

I had moved, and and then came down with a severe, and very stubborn inner-ear infection. This has been going on for over six weeks! I couldn't even pass a "sobriety test" that the doctor gave me to test my balance. Because my balance was off so bad, I was forbidden to drive by medical order. This is like being very drunk, but without the euphoria--everything spins, and nausea results frequently.

As a result, I haven't gotten out to take many pictures, but I do now have some new one to upload.

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Thanks, Flickr friends! The views of the current five shots on my front page, on 21 June 2008, brought my view count to well over 25,000 in the six months that I've been on Flickr.

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Edit, 2007/04/10:

I just received this message from a lady, 74 years young, whom I didn't know. She lives in a neighboring state. This made my day, and encourages me to keep on shooting:

"Thank you, Dixon, for taking me on a wonderful walk down memory lane. I was born on North Main Street on July 4, 1934 and lived in the Moorefield area until I was 16 years old and we moved to Maryland.

New Windsor, Maryland"

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I'm a design engineer for a large cabinet corporation. For a living, I create 2D drawings in AutoCAD 2008, and lately have gotten into 3D modeling in Autodesk Inventor 2008 Simulation Suite at my employer. I also do a lot of coding to control manufacturing robotics. I like doing this, but I need other creative outlets, away from my day job.

Something that I've wanted to do since childhood is to get into photography professionally, so I guess you could call the photos you see on my page "practice," or "learning" shots.

I really appreciate any comments, and I will return the favor. If I know what you like, then that will help me learn to be a better photographer.

I want to add that my wife, Andrea, gives me unlimited moral support and makes a lot of personal sacrifice to support my hobby. I don't know if she realizes how much I appreciate this, so this is my public proclamation of thanks to my wife.

A little history: When I was a kid, I used a Kodak "box" camera, which would be called a medium format today, as the actual size of the film was 4x5 inches. I did everything in B/W, because I could buy five rolls of that for the cost of one roll of color film.

I did thousands of shots with that camera, until I bought a Kodak Instamatic. With the Instamatic, I went color, mainly because the price of Kodachrome film had gone way down. I had at least twenty shoeboxes full of shots from that camera.

Then, I graduated to a Nikon SLR, very basic, with no internal metering. Shot dozens of boxes full of shots with this, too. Then, with the stress of single parenting two small children and holding at least two jobs at a time, I just stopped shooting pictures. It wasn't long after that when our valley was devastated by the ""Great Flood of '85," which washed away all of my previous work which was stored in my Mother's house--which was also washed away (Mom escaped well ahead of the flood.)

When digital came around (seems like just a couple of years ago), I bought a 2 megapixel pocket digicam which I used mainly for family snapshots. When that gave out, I bought another pocket model with 3 mp, but this Vivitar had manual controls, which I started to experiment with.

That was it, I was once again bitten by the bug. After a couple of years, I bought a Sony DSC-H2, which had rave reviews, and was described as the closest thing to a professional DSLR without actually being one. Most of my earliest Flickr shots have been produced by that little marvel, and I still use it in certain situations, but I have to take it from my wife to do so.

I now have a Canon EOS 40D DSLR. This camera has has really expanded my photographic horizons, but it has so many bells and whistles it was daunting, at first. It makes that old Nikon film SLR seem like a product of the stone age. I've had to re-learn everything, as well as attempt to absorb the myriad new features of the 40D, but it opens up a whole new world of creativity for me.

I mostly use the EF-S 17-85mm IS USM lens that came in the kit. This lens has a great zoom range, and the image stabilization is great for when I've just hit Starbuck's. I've also add an EF 50mm f/1.8and an EF 75-300 f/4-5.6 USM. I use the 50 for most indoor low-light shots, where it excels, because I can do away with the flash. Next, I want some real quality glass, and that will be the 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM, which costs more than the camera body.

Dixon