This stumbled upon this thread and I seem to have diarrhea of the keyboard tonight while I sit in the cold of my studio after getting today's work to the PO, uploaded to a publication out of town and a trip to the Tractor Supply for cat food for my starving cats...
Always been a photographer since I was "exposed" to Ansel Adams as a preteen in the 1970s. Worked at a newspaper and had a paper route in high school and continued with the latter until the 30-40 hour days (yes that was a press day on a small weekly paper with too small of press most of the time) pushed me over the edge and I went back to being a college student and the economy tanked.
Did real estate for a few years (my father built houses his final years, both renting them and selling) and decided the family biz wasn't for me and I floated doing odd photo jobs for a few years. Then with I went to work for a man who needed a Cibachorme printer for his portfolio and he found out I knew how to work with a stat camera and so I did both for him. He had a small vineyard and I managed it after helping to build his personal wine cellar. Then it was working with wine makers a few years, both shooting bottles and vineyards, driving tractors, picking and crushing grapes and making wine.
I worked with a nearby elementary school with their photo program, science camp and their gifted-and-talented program. The principal became a substitute father after mine died years before and we got along well. He got this new computer named after an apple in 1984 and I gave it a try... So with a little scarping of money I bought one, learned the software and hardware, networking, etc. and brought my graphic skills into the 21st century. That also became a paying gig doing networks, training, repair, consulting for a few years.
When a house burned down a few doors down, I went to work as a volunteer for CalFire getting a nice check whenever I would go to a large fire and then pickup work for their training academy. In the mean time, they needed a graphic artist for their training manuals and I did hundreds of illustrations using my computer and learning the ins-and-outs of the software I already had. Then Photoshop was born...
My favorite at that time was to get into shooting resource producers for annual reports and pr, shooting gold mines and timber companies.
About that time I got a flyer from an editor I had worked with in Nevada for a gathering of photographers and writers in Winnemucca called Shooting the West. I wanted to go that first year since I wanted to see the people behind the names editing my work and the bylines I was seeing in magazine along with a college friend who was then the Nikon rep. Though I missed that symposium, I made it there the next year and since I knew how to run a Carousel Projector I got hired the next year and have been there ever since including one year opening the symposium from Belgrade, Serbia, via Skype.
I worked for CalFire until the program ran out of money and then worked as a school secretary, was the Mac trainer for the California Dept. of Real Estate in SF just as they were getting automated and starting this new thing called "e-mail..." and got back into my photography doing calendars, books, editorial, commercial, sports, portraits, everything coming into the studio. Meanwhile I did more graphic design including books and then into websites back as HTML was morphing from 2.x to 3.x.
About the same time the local Indian Casino got going well after several false starts and my friend became the marketing/advertising director there and for several years we got them well established on the map.
All these skills gathered like a scavenger hunt because useful working in a rural community to keep the lights on and food in the fridge though it was tight at times. In the late 1990s, digital photography was just starting to become main stream so I watched and educated myself.
In the mean time, my mother had health issues and luckily patched things up with my sister. I took care of the family real estate while my sister took care of my mother. So that got added to the load for a few years.
911 hit and with it was the beginning of the end for film. My mother passed away a few months later but I had a handle on everything by then. My photography was secondary for a few years but I took advantage and moved into digital during this turmoil.
When the dust settled for my family and the country settled into the new "normal" I was ready for the call from America 24/7 which was the tipping point on digital and jumped into the project full-bore, but still shot film for backup for the next few years.
In the mean time, I kept on top of the computers, software, digital cameras and kept all going. I put money aside from my mother's estate and used some to bring myself into the new digital world and made it work. Though it was still not perfect, it was a little better!
I joined ASMP about that time and when they found out I knew how to produce a magazine, got roped into becoming an editor and publisher though I can't spell worth a darn, but I know how to deliver a finished product well and on time. ;-) Since I also had lots of hands-on digital by then, it was a natural to share my skills and crafts with those making the transition including a few calling themselves "digital dinosaurs." Things fell into place well back then.
About that same time with a little better income, I started traveling more, some of it for the calendars and books that my editors were wanting me to shoot for and some of it just because I could. For many years I was traveling with what I described as the ultimate digital accessory for travel at that time, a small travel trailer to haul the computer needed to support this new direction in work.
Of course I would open my mouth when people needed to be brought out of the box and I started work with several local groups including my local tourism council and several small museums. Some of it is paid, a lot is volunteer when the money dries up but it all benefits my community!
I soon got into doing my own printing again, just like I had in the 1980s and this time will all my skills got a nice revenue stream with large-format printing, glad I had learned die-transfer and 4-color printing skills along the way! One editorial client I had worked with for years knew I had this printer and before I knew what was happening told me I was in charge of doing a fine-art run for her foundation and so For nearly two weeks that printer chugged away 24/7 as I searched for paper as I cleaned out several suppliers in the process. The artist was thrilled with the quality and my editor was pleased with the entire experience. The original images started as sow's ears for that run!
With the large format printers, the first was great for a couple of years as I figured it out but it wasn't large enough for my vision and a bit larger printer came up for sale and I bought it. Within months the work from it was putting money in the bank. A couple of years later after an ASMP meeting and watching Bill Atkinson present his work with an even larger format printer, I bought another to do canvas. With this new skill that printer paid its way in no time and printing on canvas became a new skill paying the bills.
I kept doing portraits, editorial, commercial, books and calendars and it all added to a nice diversity using many of my skills to keep me from boredom...
In the mean time, my mentor Al Weber seeing my skills in digital brought me in to teach a series of portfolio workshops on the California Missions which resulted in many museum shows. The workshops grew and brought in great instructors including Steve Johnson and Kim Weston and it was a pleasure to teach with them!
For a few years I teamed up with Jim Sugar a former photographer with National Geographic and we taught classes using TTL and wireless TTL flash for a few years. The workshops led to a call out of the blue from Las Vegas and we teamed up to create a week-plus training program for the Grand Canyon Skywalk photographers. Timing was perfect and we could see great results with the staff in the quality of their work. That required learning a new bunch of skills to approach in many ways!
When that was over I got a call from the casino needing work for their remodel hotel and conference center. I grabbed my framing expert and the two of us showed up with both what they requested (reusing work from a job the few years before) and what we thought may be a better product for them. Though it looks months, we were the only ones that they would and could work with since I could deliver concepts to them within hours and my files are very deep and my digital skill along with a large-format printer are well-tuned. Within a little more than a year of that meeting most of the project was well underway and became over 600 large-format pieces printed on canvas and framed, most 20x30 to 30x40 but some up to 40x60 in the mix.
That project paid for some international travel and I tied that travel with connections to my community and other projects including a few museum shows as a result. As always, one thing lead to another and I was and still am able to reinvent myself constantly.
Two years ago, I blew out my knee and so I needed to get myself in better shape since I don't bounce well now that I'm in my sixties... sort of a wake-up call physically. So I started walking and getting back into shape. I was well enough by summer 2019 to take friends to Ireland to photograph and then to continue to Serbia for my seventh trip there (a whole other story on how that became to be!) and tag along with a pilgrimage with American diaspora from Serbia.
Got home from that and within a few months after a long week photographing at my county fair (something I've done most of my life and especially since 4 H), I got a call in the middle of the night after I had just got into bed that my family home was engulfed in flames from the fire chief of a nearby town and for me to bring the insurance papers...
The house was gutted, my early photo files stored in outer buildings were now ashes but my renters were fine and no firefighters injured. The fire was devastating not only to my early archives but also to my renters and the renters next door who were also burned out. It was a difficult week since I had minor surgery scheduled later in the week that had been bumped twice before.
My renters found a new home nearby quickly and my life got turned into another direction. I already had a ton of work to complete from the fair and a major celebration of the founding of my church happening all within weeks and only one of me to handle it all.
I used the skills I learned at CalFire while I was a graphic artist there since I was smart enough to learn about both fire and project management while I was there, so I put together a plan to rebuild and triaged my time between planning, recovery, building, handling the church celebration (which included the publication of a book that was already in progress along with a wall calendar). Most of the photo biz got put on hold beyond what had to be done for everyone.
I became first a demo "expert" then an "owner-builder" as I worked with the local building department to get the paperwork in order to get the property cleaned-up within environmental frameworks and testing then work the logistics of a skill I guess I absorbed from my father as a little kid when he was a home builder.
My job was to clean-up behind my contractors, deal with the paperwork and inspections, approve the sub-contractors and keep the project moving until completion. My contractors had my back covered and the subs and inspectors complemented us for our clean worksite and good craftsmanship they saw as the house came rose through the ashes upon the original foundation constructed 80 years before.
As the house was coming along, the pandemic hit and that was pretty much the end of all photo-related work for spring and into the start of summer. In some ways it was nice to have a break from the annual cycle of work and teaching but the lack of income was a bummer. However, though there were a few weeks delay in finishing the house, it was signed-off with a final inspection via FaceTime and the inspector went though with me holding the phone into every nook and crannies and checking everything off.
The house was rebuilt in 11 months and rented exactly one year after the fire.
As I had time, I was processing files hanging around waiting for time and I was going out shooting when I could. A few nice jobs trickled in during summer and that got me a little income which paid for a new head on my current second-hand large-format printer. A few weddings got booked and shot and another wall calendar got produced for the church and I now have a new skill in home construction as an owner-builder, just like my father fifty years ago!
So, now that I've put everyone asleep with diarrhea of the keyboard I've "survived" for decades while riding a roller coaster with an occasional rest on a merry-go-round, using every skill I've absorbed along the way. Part of it was by necessity, part of it as a result of my neurodiversity and seldom a dull moment as I plan to keep at it until I croak in my boot and they plant me six feet under.
To say the least, it's been interesting and I'm glad I didn't settle for working 20-30 years to retire to what I wanted to do in the first place only to die within too few years.
