About Yophotoman

So how did I become "yophotoman?" It was simple and accidental. I typically carried a camera everywhere I went. I was always looking for that killer shot and a gig to make a little side money. When I was asked why I had a camera, I would respond with, "I could be your photo man..." My friends would kid me about it and introduce me as the guy who could be "yo' photo man." It stuck.

Carrying a camera comes almost naturally, my Father was one of those 1940's photographers who traveled from school to school shooting the school classes, clubs and ball teams. That's what he was doing when I was born but Mom, the lab tech told him that taking care of a new born and the lab was too much. Dad quit the traveling photographer gig and went back to what he was raised in: farming, but Dad wanted me to fill his photographer shoes.

So I grew up on farms in North West Ohio but a camera was always in my hands... Dad saw to that. From the time I could walk I was taught photography. My first lessons were starring up at a B&G 5x7 view camera. Dad was explaining to this toddler how to read a light meter, set F stops and focus the lens and stretch the bellows... like I had a clue, but I tried to fill those big shoes.

Eventually I learned about such technical things, when I got big enough to see over the old wood tripod. Dad taught me a little about lab techniques too. I even learned how to use a Speed Graphic, the press camera of the 40's. I carried an old German single lens reflex all through my Army service. I still have those 35mm slides, but they were converted to digital as soon as it became available in the drug store labs. I eventually took photography seriously enough to buy but single and double lens reflex cameras, a whole string of them. Reflex means the image in reflected inside the camera so the user can see the image as well as the film get exposed to the same image. Hey, we had 'WYSIWYG' way back then! I learned to process all my own black and white film, print contact sheets and enlargements.

In college I joined the yearbook staff and was photo editor in chief my last year. During that time I also belonged to the college photo club, shot the id photos of the incoming freshmen and even completed a correspondence course in photography. I counted the footage of what I had shot and processed one day, over 300 feet of film. No wonder I had to replace the bearings in my Pentax SLR twice. I bought many books on photography too. My wife was not too thrilled when I committed to buying the complete Time Life Photography series books, a commitment of over $300, back in the early 70's, big bucks then. I still have that encyclopedic set of books. They have served many young photographers over the years as a reference to the film technology and the great masters of the art from its early days.

Then came the digital age starting in the 80's. My first inclination was digital images. Digital cameras didn't exist yet so I contented myself with scanning paper photographs... with a hand scanner. That's a little device you place on a paper photograph and manually drag it over the paper. That was a skill! Worse, I couldn't afford a color crt so I learned digital imaging with an Apple/Mac Plus with a back and white screen. I found a program called "Digital Darkroom" which tried to mimic the manual film lab techniques.

I was learning from a professional graphic artist, I entered the local technical school in graphic arts and worked by day as an advertising salesmen, selling digital advertisements for a magazine. I even had a photo advertising business on the side. Eventually I figured out that I wasn't an artist. There went four years.

Still being somewhat young, I decide to try skilled manual labor for awhile and went into the woodworking and cabinet business. But alas, small shops and independent workers can't compete with the major cabinet factories. However, I discovered CAD software, specific to the cabinet industry. Ah ha, digital imaging! I hired into a home store looking to be a kitchen designer. The only opening was in the paint dept. I got hired because they thought I was a paint contractor. No, I was just picking up paint for an engineering company who wanted to paint their shop floors and machines. It was only a temp job too. I never did tell them the real story.

After a stint in the paint dept. and six months in the garden dept., I got to transfer to the cabinet dept and start desgining kitchens. I was working with a computer and digital images, how fun. Around that time I hooked up to the Internet... as soon as AOL did but it was several years later that I got a color monitor and discovered that there were digital pictures on the Internet.

Eventually digital cameras appeared in the computer catalogs. When they got cheap enough, I bought into the technology too. That started a series of upgrading to better and better digital cameras. Eventually I landed a Nikon D40, my current camera. That one was good enough to upload photos to image sharing and sales sites. I even sold a few pics.

I started 'yophotoman.com' while I was still in the film and paper era, thinking that the combination of Internet and pictures was going to be a great match. The format and offering has changed many times but it is still a passion for photography that has kept yophotoman on the internet for six years. But now the big draw is moving pictures on websites and Internet marketing. Yeah, I know a lot of people are doing both already but hey, I'm just an old photographer, pardon me if I'm a bit slow.

Yophotoman is my first domain name and my first website. I have since expanded into many other endeavors on the Internet but this website is still my first love. You know what is said about your first love? "You never forget your first..."