A passion for photography

It's a little known fact that in addition to my other mixed media art pursuits, I have a passion for photography. I have a lovely Nikon digital SLR that I carry around with me when I travel for pleasure. It's a D40 that I bought three year ago for $1,000. It was a huge splurge for me — a birthday present to myself that I paid for with a check from a freelance gig I did on a lark.

Since our traveling is now mostly family vacations with children, I put my SLR away for a while and bought a new Nikon wide angle CoolPix camera with touch screen (the one Ashton Kutcher is doing the PR for). I'm having fun playing with it and managed to get a couple of nice shots on our recent trip to Oregon.

It's a dream of mine to one day have a gallery exhibit of my photos, as well as my jewelry and college/assemblage work. I know it would be kind of an oddball exhibit, but in my mind, it's a very funky and eclectic gallery showing where all kinds of interesting strangers come up to me during opening night and say, "I didn't realize you were so talented," or "Dahling, I simply must own one of your pieces!" Well, a girl can dream can't she? 

My love for photography happened during college when I was required to take a semester of photojournalism for my degree focusing on print journalism. Yes, it was long enough ago that we actually had to chose our area of speciality. I chose newspapers or print journalism. I was better with words than pictures and I thought broadcasting was for sissies. There was no such thing as new media or Internet journalist 20 years ago.

I loved my photography classes. I loved using film (gasp!) and going into the darkroom to develop and print my film (double gasp!). I loved the alchemy that happened when the exposure of light to my image in that pitch-black room made magic before my eyes.

Of course, I haven't used film in at least 10 years. Today, photography is a language of jpgs, memory cards and Photoshop.

But the one thing that hasn't changed is the magic of the moment. That instant of forever capturing a visual that has the power to make me laugh, or cry or make my heart hurt from the feeling it gives me.