I am a retired court stenographer. I worked in the Connecticut court system from 1969 to 2003. Shortly before my retirement, I started to volunteer in the Treworgy Planetarium at Mystic Seaport. Astronomy was my hobby as a youngster, and I found something to do in retirement that brought me back to a childhood love of mine. I give lectures in the planetarium two days each week, which involves talking about what one can see in the current night sky, as well as explaining how mariners use the stars to find their way at sea.

Mystic Seaport is a maritime museum, located in Mystic, Connecticut. The Museum’s grounds cover 19 acres on the Mystic River in Mystic, CT, and include a recreated New England coastal village, a working shipyard, formal exhibit halls, and state-of-the-art artifact storage facilities. The Museum is home to more than 500 historic watercraft, including four National Historic Landmark vessels, most notably the 1841 whale ship Charles W. Morgan, America’s oldest wooden commercial ship still in existence. Though the planetarium is not a building that one would have seen in a typical late-19th century seaport village, it was built and opened at Mystic Seaport in 1960 because of the deep connection of mariners using the stars to find their way at sea.

I began to take photography more seriously in 2010 when I visited Israel. Up until that point I was using a less-sophisticated Nikon point-and-shoot camera. I purchased a Nikon D90 for the Israel trip, and have since graduated to a Nikon Z7ii, with accompanying lenses: 50mm f1.8; 24-70mm f2.8; 70-200mm f4; and a 200-500mm f5.6; all Nikon lenses. I use the Creative Cloud versions of Lightroom and Photoshop in my post-processing workflow.

I love photography. I am currently most fond of photographing birds and wildlife, but I also love to photograph people in candid moments. I don't foresee ever becoming a professional photographer. I enjoy the creative process of taking good photos, and making them look as well as they possibly can in post production.