Latest Note: I've been uploading my older photos, and my goodness, I can really see how I've improved!

I'm a technical writer, a goth DJ, an announcer for women's flat track roller derby, a folklorist, a sculptor, and now, a photographer.

I've been shooting since 2005, and originally got into photography to help with a larger obsession: identifying the many wildflowers and weeds of my adopted state, Utah.

See, flowers are small. Sometimes, they are really small. And often, the way you distinguish between, say, 2 different 5-petaled yellow shrubby flowers is something half a millimeter across, at the base of the leaves. So, an average point and shoot camera will just not give you the detail you need for when you get back home and crack open your stack of wildflower guides.

So, off I went, after about a year of research, and bought a Konicaminolta Z3, and I loved it. For being a point-and-shoot, it was amazing, with a macro range of 1cm. I fell in love.

Later, I upgraded to the Konicaminolta A200 (after a brief but disastrous experience with the Last A2 Ever To Be Sold, which was broken -- as was my heart!), which was a nicer camera in many ways, but I never really liked it as much.

Finally, while taking a photography class, I decided it was time to either spend real money on a real camera or give up photography. I had a Canon Rebel xTI in my possession 2 weeks later. I've upgraded several times, and discovered a love of photographing bugs and spiders, and finally, people.

In 2023, I traveled to Louisiana to spend time with my elderly mother, and I brought along my spouse's grandfather's Kodak Vigilant Jr 620, a medium format camera from the 1940s. I shot some really terrible images with it, then got a gorgeous one in Southern Utah on my way home and I fell in love. The Jr is a low-end camera, so I did some more research and learned that the 620 line was all over the place in terms of lens, aperture, quality, etc. I figured out the best of them and picked up a couple on eBay until I got one in good working condition. A classic Canon 35mm, a vintage Bower 35, and a toy Holga followed suit, and now I'm shooting and even developing* film after a lifetime of being completely inept with film cameras.

* Not printing, though. I digitize the negatives and take them into Photoshop. I don't think I'll ever be interested in darkroom stuff. I've been using Photoshop since about 1992. and I think I'd lose my mind trying to do it the old-fashioned way. But maybe I'll check back in a few years. There was a time when I thought I'd never pick up a camera, and when I thought I'd never touch film, so who knows?