I am a hobbyist photographer...I enjoy landscapapes and trying to capture what I see around me. My wife and I travel quite a bit and while I do like to chronical our trips, we don't very often find ourselves the subjects of my photos. I am not a purist with regard to showing what the camera saw or see's... I like photoshop to bring out or show off what I see.

When I was about 10 years old I found a 35mm SLR camera (a Pentax K1000 with a fixed 45mm lens) while hiking Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire...this was the beginning of my hobby, one where my level of interest has varied from time to time throughout my life, but has always been a part of me. My skills and interest both have evolved since then, but the biggest influencer for me probably has been the evolution of photography and technology into digital. For example, the early years I used film only as there was no "digital", and then I became interested in digital cameras well before they were considered mainstream, and well before they could be considered good even, and then I found Photoshop, which again, my interest and abilities have evolved. I really like digital photography mainly because the basic principles of film photography are mostly in-tact, but the results are instant, and the cost is nearly free.

I would not characterize myself as a particularly skilled photographer. I have no training and everything I know is from trial and error, experimenting, and reading. I enjoy taking, editing, and viewing my photos - of course, and probably just as much, I enjoy using Photoshop to see and create some interesting results. For me, this is about capturing what I see, and being able to experience it again and again.

I don't have any photos that I took with that found Pentax, or a Minolta SLR that I worked summers and saved for as a teenager - not even a couple of prints that won local photography contests as a teen. I have used about 6 different digital cameras over the years. I like the flexibility and creativity that DSLR's offer, but I find them heavy, and while site-seeing they can be painful for me to carry all day, so I also have a small Nikon Coolpix. I like the results I get with the Coolpix, but prefer my Canon DSLR.

Many of my photos are processed to some extent with Photoshop - clearly I am not a photography purist. I like the creativity that Photoshop and other tools afford. For me, my photography is about seeing what I see, and sometimes enhancing the scene or shot. There are as many perspectives about post processing as there are people, it seems everyone has an opinion; from the extreme that no photo should ever be altered, to nearly complete fabrication, and anywhere in between. I feel this is a personal choice that we all are fortunate enough to be able to make - no harm no foul either way. I respect the purists who don't do any post processing, I know it is more challenging to take fabulous photos or produce stunning effects with just the camera, their skills are impressive. I like to think that I have a mixed approach, where I utilize my fairly basic understanding of the principles like depth of field, ISO, shutter speed, aperture, and how they all interact, etc., to obtain some desired effects, and then if I want to, use Photoshop to further enhance the result. I will admit that using the camera to take a good photo to begin with is generally easier than trying to use Photoshop to make a poor photo - good.

I hope you enjoy!