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Wielding a Kodak 110 in his youth, Mike McCall imagined himself becoming a renowned photographer. Some of his snapshots from those times are forever enshrined in his high school yearbooks. Others are lost in photo albums carefully tucked away where they wouldn't be lost. Sadly, his camera rarely saw light of day (or night) during his college years.

In the mid-1970s, Mike borrowed a cousin's Pentax single-lens reflex film camera to carry on a trip to Washington, DC. On this trip he rediscovered his love for photography. After a divorce and a few years of frugality, Mike bought his own single-lens reflex film camera, a Canon A-1. Again, sadly, life intervened. His career as a teacher of literature and grammar became his highest priority, and photography happened for him only occasionally. Besides, 35mm film and processing were expensive for a young man trying to rebuild his life and career.

Happily, Mike's teaching career flourished with his hard work and constant study, and though he had little time to thoughtfully pursue photography, he eventually found a way to use photography in his teaching. In the late 1990s, he abandoned film for digital with a Sony Mavica that stored its shots on floppy disk. The Mavica was obviously severely limited in respect to both resolution and storage. Mike soon replaced the Mavica with a Konica-Minolta DiMAGE Z2, a sweet little camera. Mike cried when he dropped it and it broke.

So in the early years of the 21st century, with his teaching career driving to its inevitable and much anticipated end, Mike bought a Nikon D70s, followed by a Nikon D90. Mike began making photos of abandoned rural buildings and natural scenes and of the fans and players at Georgia Southern University football games. In 2005, Mike discovered the photographic opportunities and challenges that offered by shooting the St. Patrick's Day Rugby Tournament in Savannah, Georgia. During these years, Mike also tried portrait and wedding photography and found both discomfiting. After accidentally damaging his Nikon D7100, Mike got a Nikon D7500, his current tool.

Although renown still eludes Mike, he no longer cares. Now he is more philosophical about his photography. A photograph is like a work of fiction, he thinks. He wants to make photographic images "about" rather than merely "of". Since he long ago realized he hasn't much talent for writing, making fiction through photography satisfies his urge to make art. Georgia Southern has grown in size so large that he just doesn't want the hassle of attending games in person anymore, and the Rugby Tournament which he has photographed since 2005 is on hold while Covid-19 rages, but nature and rural and urban scenes are all around.

I am over 21.

I post only photographs to which I own the rights (except where otherwise noted). Please do not copy, print, post, or otherwise reproduce these photos without my consent.

"Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed." -- Garry Winogrand

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance." -- Samuel Johnson

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.” - Peter Lindbergh

“The important thing is not the camera but the eye.” - Alfred Eisenstaedt

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms that give that event its proper expression.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson

“People say photographs don’t lie, mine do.” -David LaChapelle

"The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression... . In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif." — Henri Cartier-Bresson

I'm over 21.