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My earliest attempts at photography occurred when I went to college at Iowa State University - untold years ago. My folks bought me an inexpensive "Instamatic" camera and instructed me to have fun and bring back pictures. That simple little camera served me well throughout my college days, and for years afterwards, even after the simple light meter in it broke. |
| I took a lot of nice pictures with it, mostly scenic images of places that I visited. I was fascinated with symmetry and structure, and a lot of my earliest compositions were of reflections in water or vertical views of towers and smokestacks from the base, looking up. Eventually I did a few nature shots, such as a sugar maple tree in autumn or ice-covered pine needles. |  |
| Though I was a "nature kid" as a youth, for some reason I didn't start doing nature photography until my middle years when I first moved to New England (1987). Moving to this region turned out to be a mid-life adventure. I was really excited to be living up here and wanted to share some of that excitement with family "back home." It was autumn, and the scenery was gorgeous. I realized by then that the old Instamatic wouldn't be up to the tasks ahead, and I bought the simplest, all manual, 35-mm camera I could - a Ricoh KR-5 with a standard 50mm lens. That Ricoh worked and worked and worked, and I took thousands of pictures with it. Soon enough, I graduated to slide film and felt a need to do both slides and prints, so I bought another KR-5. There was no turning back after that (though I considered dropping the hobby a couple times when finances were tight). Eventually I added a Tamron 90mm macro lens, a Ricoh 28-100mm zoom and a Tamron 60-300mm telephoto zoom lens to my camera bag, and a sturdy Slik tripod. (I think the Ricoh lens was made by Pentax.) The 60-300mm lens eventually fell into a lake, was ruined and was replaced with a 70-210mm and a tele-converter. | |
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| The months and years passed, and the original goal of my photography - to send snapshots back to the folks - had become all but forgotten. I roamed and roamed the Connecticut countryside in search of scenic and natural beauty. Most of my first images during that period were scenic shots - old, historic buildings, fall foliage and "mountain" views (that turned out looking like hills on film). As my childhood passion for nature was rekindled, I began doing more and more nature photography, especially a lot of closeups of a variety of subjects, including flowers. The years 1987-89 were very intense years of photography. |  |
| At some point I decided the expenses were getting out of hand. I did a slide show on a visit to family in Missouri in 1989. My sister remarked, "Your scenic shots are nice, but your wildflower pictures are special. Why not just concentrate on that?" I considered that alternative for a while, decided that perhaps she was right, and canceled plans to pack away my camera gear. |
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The move to Vermont the next year opened up a whole new set of experiences. Connecticut's natural areas are nice, but Vermont is quite special - much less spoiled by civilization and much more wild. Despite a period of initial poverty after relocation, I continued photographing, though almost entirely wildflowers. As I soon discovered, within New England, Vermont is THE PLACE for wildflowers. The richness and diversity in that state are unequaled in the region. Even some ordinary roadside locations can be lush wildflower havens. The woodlands are often carpeted with spring ephemerals - trilliums as far as the eye can see, large masses of club mosses, orchids in bogs and swamps. |
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I snapped and snapped and snapped, and learned
a lot about wildflowers and ferns in the process. You get to
know a species well while staring at it through a closeup lens for a
half-hour while waiting for the wind to abate and the mosquitoes to stop
bugging you.
Circumstances of life brought me to western Massachusetts a few years ago. I don't get out for photography quite as often as I used to. I've been concentrating in recent years on my wildflower meadow gardens up in Vermont. A lot of my butterfly photos have come from those gardens, which I still manage. |
Photo by Laurie DiCesare |
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On the technical side . . . Though I eventually graduated to a couple "better" cameras (a Pentax MX and a Ricoh XR-X 3pf) and put the tired old KR-5s away, I stayed with manual focus systems. I just don't need auto-focus for what I do, and always use the new Ricoh in manual mode. The digital photography rage hasn't infected me yet. A really good digital system with high-quality lenses is still quite expensive. Regarding films, I've given up on print film entirely. I can't afford the extra cost, and it's too difficult getting the labs to do the prints "just right." Besides, now with the computer and an able photo printer, I can produce an occasional greeting card at home that's quite acceptable. The first slide films I used were Kodachrome films. I tried Fujichrome, reluctantly at first, but then got hooked. Now I use Sensia 100 and Sensia 200 almost exclusively. Occasionally I'll go for a roll or two of Velvia or Provia. A large number of my butterfly shots were done with Fujichrome Provia 1600. Yes, it's grainy and contrasty, but imagine hand-holding a manual-focus camera with a 420mm lens, shooting at 1/500 second and still getting an aperture of f8 !! I'm entirely self-taught, have never apprenticed with any professionals (though I'm sure that would have been beneficial), and rarely go to workshops or seminars. I have read a lot, however. For years, I subscribed to Outdoor Photographer magazine, and learned a great deal from the professionals who contributed articles. I bought a variety of books on photography, but learned the most from the works of John Shaw and Craig and Nadine Blacklock. They are but three of the many outstanding nature photographers whose works I've admired and learned from. |
