Hi, my name is David Smith. While many photographers go by their name (you know Bob Jones Photography). David Smith photography is just too plain for me. I am a 60+ embarking on second, maybe third career, but it is unbelievably fun!
It is my goal to provide quality professional photos for my clients, but along the way, provide education to my clients and to whoever else wishes to read my blog and become a better photographer.
One thing about photography, it is a journey, even the best photographers can become better. So, I am not going to present myself as somebody who always gets the best picture, but it is my goal to continually get better and provide interesting photographs that can be enjoyed for generations.
My journey began as a young boy. My father had dark room equipment and I couldn’t wait for the days when we would put the newspaper over the basement windows to create our basement darkroom. Watching a picture appear in the developer solution was magic in my mind. Photography has had a grip on me ever since then.
Eventually, while in College, I finally got an SLR camera. It was fun to finally to be able to better compose photographs and use focus for my creative nature. My major was agricultural engineering and we were required to take a limited number of S&H electives. I decided it would be fun to take a photo journalism course. I did it just to have fun. At the end of the course, my instructor suggested that I should consider a career in photo journalism. I decided at the time that engineering would provide a better future. But, it is time to pursue that dream.
I went to graduate school and was able to pursue a number of photo opportunities with my spare time. I was able to get a Canon AE1 which is a legendary classic along with an AT1 (manual exposure) and a small assortment of lenses. I did a number of informal portraits, a couple weddings, sports photography, and many news photo shoots. Shooting ISU basketball and football games on the field was great fun. While, I didn’t have the fast and long lenses of the Register’s ‘Big Peach’ photographers, I thought I did pretty well. Learning to anticipate plays and where to position myself was of great value. The same is true today. Where do you position yourself with respect to the light? When do you anticipate a smile or the look on the face that you desire?
I then got married and there were other priorities. I still had my cameras, but it was more about family snap shots and catching simple memories. I had become increasingly frustrated on how to organize my photos. Then on a vacation to Colorado, I lost many photos due to user error (ok, I am not perfect). Digital was starting to happen at this time. While the quality didn’t compare to good 35mm photography, the ability to catalog and organize the photos on my computer was very attractive to me.
My first digital camera was a Sony DSC-S50. Then a DSC-F717 followed by an Olympus E-500. These were followed by a Sony NEX 5n and now a Sony A7 II. Another blog post will describe what I learned from this.
I will go into more detail on these stages in my life later. But, for now, keep those shutters clicking!
ShutterSmith Photography 