Also known as: brokenlens
Dixon Marshall lives in a neighboring state. This made my day, and encourages me to keep on shooting: "Thank you, Dixon, for taking me on a wonderful walk down memory lane. I was born on North Main Street on July 4, 1934 and lived in the Moorefield area until I was 16 years old and we moved to Maryland. "As I went through the pictures I remembered going to Sunday School at the Episcipol church, walking past the Wise home on my way home from school, going to the movies on Friday night to see Roy Rogers at McCoy's Grand and several years later getting my first kiss there in the 10'th row back (even remember that because that is where we always sat). I saw my first military funeral at Olivet Cemetery when I went with my Dad while he participitated. The best of all was going to town on Saturdays with my Mom to get groceries and knowing everyone we saw. When I go back now I don't know anyone, but it is still wonderful to see my beautiful little town. "You did a great job with the pictures and brought joy to this old lady's heart. "Thank You! Bettie Barr Myers Wehland New Windsor, Maryland" ______________________________________________ I'm a design engineer for a large cabinet corporation. For a living, I create 2D drawings in AutoCAD 2008, and lately have gotten into 3D modeling in Autodesk Inventor 2008 Simulation Suite at my employer. I also do a lot of coding to control manufacturing robotics. I like doing this, but I need other creative outlets, away from my day job. Something that I've wanted to do since childhood is to get into photography professionally, so I guess you could call the photos you see on my page "practice," or "learning" shots. I really appreciate any comments, and I will return the favor. If I know what you like, then that will help me learn to be a better photographer. I want to add that my wife, Andrea, gives me unlimited moral support and makes a lot of personal sacrifice to support my hobby. I don't know if she realizes how much I appreciate this, so this is my public proclamation of thanks to my wife. A little history: When I was a kid, I used a Kodak "box" camera, which would be called a medium format today, as the actual size of the film was 4x5 inches. I did everything in B/W, because I could buy five rolls of that for the cost of one roll of color film. I did thousands of shots with that camera, until I bought a Kodak Instamatic. With the Instamatic, I went color, mainly because the price of Kodachrome film had gone way down. I had at least twenty shoeboxes full of shots from that camera. Then, I graduated to a Nikon SLR, very basic, with no internal metering. Shot dozens of boxes full of shots with this, too. Then, with the stress of single parenting two small children and holding at least two jobs at a time, I just stopped shooting pictures. It wasn't long after that when our valley was devastated by the ""Great Flood of '85," which washed away all of my previous work which was stored in my Mother's house--which was also washed away (Mom escaped well ahead of the flood.) When digital came around (seems like just a couple of years ago), I bought a 2 megapixel pocket digicam which I used mainly for family snapshots. When that gave out, I bought another pocket model with 3 mp, but this Vivitar had manual controls, which I started to experiment with. That was it, I was once again bitten by the bug. After a couple of years, I bought a Sony DSC-H2, which had rave reviews, and was described as the closest thing to a professional DSLR without actually being one. Most of my earliest Flickr shots have been produced by that little marvel, and I still use it in certain situations, but I have to take it from my wife to do so. I now have a Canon EOS 40D DSLR. This camera has has really expanded my photographic horizons, but it has so many bells and whistles it was daunting, at first. It makes that old Nikon film SLR seem like a product of the stone age. I've had to re-learn everything, as well as attempt to absorb the myriad new features of the 40D, but it opens up a whole new world of creativity for me. I mostly use the EF-S 17-55mm IS USM lens that came in the kit. This lens has a great zoom range, and the image stabilization is great for when I've just hit Starbuck's. I've also add an EF 50mm f/1.8and an EF 75-300 f/4-5.6 USM. I use the 50 for most indoor low-light shots, where it excels, because I can do away with the flash. Next, I want some real quality glass, and that will be the 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM, which costs more than the camera body. Dixon
