I want to thank the executive board for choosing me to be the Photographer of the month. This club has grown so much since Dave Strunk and I got together at the store, kicking the idea around on how to start a photo club many years ago. I know helping Dave get this club started was one of my favorite accomplishments. I will always be there to help the club in any way the club needs me.
Now what about me and my passion and love for photography! I got my first camera at the ripe old age of 5. It was a Kodak Instamatic. I started working with my father on Saturdays at Stroudsburg Foto when I was 7 or 8. That’s when I really got into it, seeing all those cameras and film! It was so cool working in the darkroom and watching the pictures develop! I stayed working at the store through high school. After college, with a brief stint in the retail world at a Dept. store, I came back to the Stroudsburg Foto to help my Mom and Dad. I took over the store from my parents when I was 27. My family has managed and owned Stroudsburg Foto for 61 years. I want to thank all of the members for your support over all those years.
My favorite camera I use now is an Olympus E-M1 Mark II with an O-M1 coming soon. I have been very blessed to be able to use a large number of cameras over the last 40 years. I love to test myself with my camera, but find the biggest joy in teaching the art of photography to people who are getting started, or trying to refine the skills that they already have. If I had to choose my favorite form of photography, it would be sports, then architecture and pretty much anything else that could get me out of the store with my camera in my hand. I’ve been very lucky to have been on the PGA and LPGA golf tour for over 30 plus years. Plus I enjoyed working on the sidelines with the Philadelphia Eagles for 3 years back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Taking pictures with a Nikon F4s film camera, carrying 40-50 rolls of 36 exposure film, not a 64gb memory card, was the norm. I have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Images at my house and store.
From 1990 to 2000 I was an Olympus Cameras commercial hot air balloon pilot. Talk about a photographic bucket list experience! This gave me a chance to log in over 400 flights in 14 different states in our beautiful country! I got to use some of the nicest film cameras from Olympus. Also. I met so many camera store owners and their employees with a ton of photographic knowledge. I traveled to the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival for 7 years in a row. It is, or was, the # 1 photographed event in the world back then. The pictures we took from the air floating around with so many colorful balloons was definitely one of my most memorable times using a camera!