My path to photography started with a sock doll.
My sister Stacia and her daughters like to make silly dolls out of socks. One day, while visiting with my siblings, Stacia showed me one of the sock dolls that she had made. As I was looking at it, I thought that I would walk around the backyard and take photos of the sock doll doing various silly things. The camera I was using was on my Blackberry phone.
Not too long after that family gathering and my little adventure with the sock doll, Stacia and her daughters made two sock dolls for me and named them Finn and Leon:
Well, now that I had my very own sock dolls, I had to let them go on adventures that I would document with my camera phone and their own website. So finnandleon.com was born (as of this writing, that website is no longer live, although all their adventures have been copied to this website).
During the time that Finn and Leon were starting their adventures, I had loaned my oldest son some money to help him purchase an engagement ring. And then in May of 2011, he asked me if, instead of cash, I would accept a camera and two lenses as payment for the debt. The camera was a Nikon D80. As I pondered this, he told me that I could take some really cool pictures of Finn and Leon with it. So I agreed to take the camera as his payment for the debt.
I had never used an SLR before and knew nothing about how they worked. My entire experience with cameras had always been with the point-and-shoot variety; no thinking or fiddling with settings required (and I had often been disappointed with the results); but now I had a camera that I could really learn about. The idea caught my imagination and my determination to learn all about photography and how to master this new camera.
And that is how it all got started.
As of this writing, I have been learning about photography for seven years. During the first four years, I had taken over 60,000 photos. As with all creative endeavors, the learning is a constant process; which is what makes it even more fun. There are always new techniques for both capturing images and for processing them. There are also always new things to see and new ways to see things that we’ve looked at for years.
I still have the Nikon D80 that my son gave me, and I have added a D7100 and a D600 with a host of lenses and other gear. This isn’t an inexpensive hobby, but it’s a blast!
If you’re interested in seeing some of the photographs I have taken since my son’s repayment of his debt, you may visit my SmugMug website where I store my photos: StevenRalphImages.com
Thank you,
Steven
February, 2018