“I got a Nikon camera, I love to take a photograph…”
Photography has become my life’s greatest passion. It wasn’t something I was formally trained to do, but from the moment I picked up a camera I was hooked on finding moments of beauty to capture.
In the last decade, I’ve taken thousands of pictures of people, places and things. But it was in the Great Outdoors where I found my true calling with the camera.
A tomboy and nature girl since birth, I feel more comfortable being outdoors where I am constantly moved by the wonders of Mother Nature. I could easily spend the rest of my life chasing birds and butterflies with a Nikon in my hand and never get bored.
My love of photography started with my fascination over an old Kodak Instamatic camera (with flash cubes) in my father’s armoire. It was broken before I’d ever laid eyes on it, but I messed around with it long enough to figure out how the mechanics should have worked. The functioning family camera was in the same armoire – a Kodak 110. It wasn’t used much – film and processing were on the expensive side – but that didn’t stop me from pretending I had an endless film supply as I clicked away with the empty camera.
My favorite grandmother was also a fan of photography. The Polaroid OneStep she had in the 1970’s was the coolest thing I’d ever seen! Watching your photo spit out of the camera and develop right before your eyes was like magic to my little brain. Seeing her whip out her camera to take pictures at family gatherings made a huge impression on me. In the 1980’s, she upgraded to a Kodak Disc camera, and I felt motivated to buy my first camera.
With the savings from my part-time jobs, I bought a Kodak K40 V35 camera my senior year of high school and quickly became the unofficial family photographer. I loved taking pictures with that reliable point-and-shoot camera! While at college, I took a photography class and learned about manual photography – a true game changer that encouraged me to buy my first single-lens reflex (SLR) camera from a pawn shop in the early 90’s, an Olympus OM1.
I was staunchly stuck in the “film is the only true photography” line of thinking for many years when digital cameras started to hit the scene. I let that go when my husband gifted me a Canon Powershot, and I learned first-hand how liberating it was to shoot as many photos as a memory card would hold versus the 12 – 36 shots you get from a film roll. Soon after, I upgraded to the Kodak EasyShare digital camera, which took some amazing shots but still felt limiting. I missed the control I had shooting with my old Olympus. My supportive and generous husband provided the solution with the gift of a Nikon D60 DSLR camera.
I was back in the zone of manual control! After racking up a massive count of shutter clicks on this versatile camera, I upgraded to a Nikon D3300 with a Nikon 55-300mm telephoto lens. Now that I was able to zoom in on objects from far away, I spent even more time outdoors looking for birds and butterflies to capture. It was with this camera and lens that I shot my first award-winning image.
With this accomplishment under my belt, I went all-in and added a whole bunch of new accessories… lights, filters, adapters and a Nikon Micro 40mm macro lens. Being able to get so close to nature with this lens opened up a whole world of new photo subjects. I filled many memory cards using the Nikon D3300 but eventually felt limitation creeping in again, this time in the form of crop sensor format.
Tons of research later, I settled on moving to the Nikon D750 full frame camera and added a Tamron 300-600mm lens to really fill out my camera bag. This is the equipment I primarily use in my current travels, and I am extremely pleased with the results. But after several years of clicking with that camera, I’m starting to sense the itch of limitation that only a drone camera can scratch. I may not be technically or traditionally trained, but I am determined in my quest to learn new techniques and expand the boundaries of capturing all the amazing beauty I see around me.
What’s the deal with the quote captions on photos?
As you look through my galleries, you’ll notice the photos are captioned with quotes. When I started Scenic Vibe Photography, my intent was to provide factual information about the photo subject. It wasn’t long before, my “reader brain” had another idea for captioning the photos. With each picture I create, I take a few moments to really look at it and tune into the emotions or memories it evokes in me. Distilling those feelings down to just a couple key words/phrases, I typically turn to the GoodReads quotes section to search for passages with those words until I find one that aligns with how the picture made me feel. I’ll also draw from song lyrics or TV & movie lines. My hope with captioning the photos in this way is to better express the story I see being told in the picture.
AWARDS
Recognition Time! I Won First Place in a Photo Contest
I received an email informing me I’d taken first place in a photo contest sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation Magazine – my second win! More than 4,800 photos were received, and my shot of Monarch butterflies stood out through 3 rounds of judging.
Exciting News! – I’ve Been Recognized!
In March of 2018, I entered a few of my nature photos in the annual National Wildlife Magazine Photo Contest…and then promptly forgot about it. I knew there would be a lot of entries from photographers with far more advanced equipment and skills, and I didn’t really count myself as a potential winner.