I might as well talk about some of my photographic history to get started. Maybe that will help, or hurt, my street cred.

Back in my college days I spent some time in Alaska working on fishing trawlers. The first year I went up north was the year the Exxon Valdez found  some rocks and spilled her guts. The oil had creeped down to Kodiak, where I was staying, and brought fishing to a halt.

So not having a job, I lived in the woods a few miles outside of the town of Kodiak until I finally found a job on a trawler. At the time it was traveling up and down the coast of Alaska buying fish and taking them back to canneries in Kodiak. I had with me a cheap little point-and-shoot camera. I took some pictures and sent the undeveloped film back home since I couldn’t affirt to have it developed there. (I was broke.)

When I got back home that fall, my Mom, who was trained as a artist, had developed my film and even had a few prints enlarged. They were pretty good, she said. (One of the photos is in my portfolio now. If I can figure out how to insert it here, I will.)

A foggy morning in Kodiak

Well, being told you have some talent gives you a bit of enthusiasm. I started to have visions of National Geographic covers.  Someday.

And I scraped enough money together to buy a Minolta X-700. I carried that everywhere. And eventually wore it out. That is when I made the jump to Nikon.

A job or two out of college I started doing field service work for an engineering company. They were still growing and the winters weren’t too busy for me. So my boss wanted me to start shooting video (I was already shooting still photos, of course) when I traveled to construction sites and during the slow winters, edit them into sales videos.

Well the technical end of video is very similar to still photography so I quickly took to it. I started in Hi-8 and bought a two gigabyte hard drive. (In 1993 or 94, that cost a bundle.) This is when I also switched to Macintosh. And for many years video production has gone hand in hand with still photography. (See my alter ego at http://www.EncompassFilmWorks.com). But, still photography has always been my passion. My creative outlet. Recently I have taken efforts to return to my roots and dedicating more energy to one-frame-at-a-time photography. This blog is part of that.

There is a link to my portfolio in the upper right of this blog. It is www.MarkDuehmig.com. (If you didnt come to this blog through my website.) Please have a look and and let me know what you think. I’d love your feedback. Many of my friends are photogs so don’t be afraid to get critical and I’ll learn from it.

Thanks and more later.
Mark
www.MarkDuehmig.com