It all started early 2002 when a friend of mine down in L.A. told me a brainstorm he was considering as a project for me. I love driving to beautiful places here in Oregon every few weeks when I can afford it. Chris knew this. He told me that in several months he may need beautiful Oregon landscape footage for his various music/video projects. If someday he would ship me a fancy digital video camera, would I be willing to take it with me and get some good shots for him?

I ALMOST opened my mouth and told him: "Chris, I know NOTHING about photography!!" Then I got wise before changing his mind for him. Anything that sounds like actually being paid to explore my home state in my beloved 'home sounds like a good idea to me.

Chris is friends with some truly major movie and video pros in Los Angeles. I was left quite mystified as to why he was asking ME when he can hire some truly V.I.P. professionals - or just buy stock footage or something. Then again, maybe he was seeing something very cool in me which I was not seeing in myself. So I figured I might as well practice with what few resources I have.

I don't have a good film camera. I can't even afford anything resembling a good camera. I don't know an f-stop from a bus stop. The best I could do for photography practice was to started buying disposable cameras from the local Fred Meyer grocery and seeing what I could do. I started taking pictures during my occasional explorations of the local landscape outside of Portland. I would try to be as picky as I could about what I was shooting... if it did not look right to me, I'd give up and point at something else.

Five or six rolls of film later, a photography pro here in Portland took one look and pronounced me "incredibly talented" and started encouraging me to display my pics in a local gallery. I didn't believe her, so I showed the shots to various other people as well as my friends.

They ALL said "You are GOOD! Go get a real camera and see what you can REALLY do!!"

Geez, dear Chris, what HAVE you started here?? :-)

I am now starting to look at photography classes. There is a beginning class in October at my local community college which teaches a person the absolute basics, such as what shutter speed is, how to choose lenses, etc.. I will be trying to sign up for this class. If I get a real, pro, quality SLR film camera for Christmas (yeah... someday) I'd explore black and white photography to see if I can make visual magic out of the gray, rainy landscapes of a normally dreary NW Oregon winter.

So now I will be brave and show my beginning photography efforts to the world. Even though I live and breathe Adobe software (anyone need an Acrobat expert? :) I have avoided using Photoshop effects on these pics... just cleaning up and cropping is all these pics have been through. i want to keep the shots as pure as possible.

I hope you enjoy them.