While I feel like I have spent my entire life in Vermont, I did not grow up here. I grew up in Massachusetts and moved to Vermont in 1986. I have not looked back since.
I bought my first camera when I was on a field trip in the 4th grade for only $1. I would like to say that I still have that camera and we have had many adventures together, but that is not the case. Only one photograph ever came out from that camera. My parents assumed that the camera was a piece of junk and had me toss it out. They did not know that I had tried to look into the camera while film was still in it to figure out how it worked!
My next camera was one that used 110 cartridges of film and a flash "cube" on top. That camera served the purpose of capturing family holidays, trips to the ocean, family pets and many birthday cakes! For a short while I had a disc camera in which the negatives resembled a view master reel. That camera lasted until shortly after the birth of my first child. My then husband had a Canon 35 mm camera and so the disc camera got lost somewhere along the way. For several years I rarely touched a camera until my children were grown up enough to realize that Mom really wanted to take pictures and bought me a basic, point and shoot 35 mm camera.
It wasn't until the summer of 2005 that I became serious about photography. I was in my final semester of undergraduate school and needed an art class in order to graduate. This was a college where the student decided what to study and created his/her own study plan. I had no idea of what to do. I couldn't paint or drawer or sing or dance. I simply was not artistic. Then I asked, could I do photography as an art? That is how it all started. I bought a Fuji s7000 and never looked back. While I no longer have that camera, I still have many of the digital images I created with it. Some of them are featured on this web site.
I now have an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts with a focus on photography. For years I shot with a Nikon D200. A few years ago I was diagnosed with RA and the D200 became too heavy to use for more than just a few moments. I recently purchased a Nikon Z50 and with an adaptor I am able to use my beloved macro lens! I choose to photography because I am in love with light and because I want everyone to see what I see. I want to preserve just a little bit of the world so someday my children's grandchildren can see the world I lived in.