The West Central Georgia Shutterbugs meet on the second Tuesday evening each month at 6:30 pm at the Thomaston-Upson Arts Council on the square in Thomaston. Our next meeting will be October 9, featuring Hoke Smith as guest speaker. Please plan to come join us. Following is a short introduction to our featured speaker.
I started out in photography in 1970 during high school contributing to the yearbook and developed an interest in photography that I carried through college at Georgia Tech where I contributed to the school newspaper (The Technique) and the yearbook (The Blueprint). I have been with UPS for over 38 years and in the early 80's I was the editor and photographer for the internal monthly magazine (called The Big Idea) for Georgia. I won company wide awards 3 times for my images competing against 70 plus other UPS editors around the US. Along the way I contributed images to several local newspapers since I usually captured images on black and white film.
I mostly took pictures of people but I always tried to get a different perspective that would make the image more interesting and people told me I should do photography on the side so I started shooting in color and doing weddings, senior portraits, parties, etc. I really enjoyed the challenges of working with people; trying to understand what they desired and I adapted to include their personal ideas along with the formal and prescribed pictures. During the 90's I concentrated more on my responsibilities at UPS and photography faded into the background with me only taking a few color film pictures here and there for our vacations and other special events.
When I turned 55 in 2009 I realized that I needed a passion and purpose in my life when door #3 (retirement) opened for me. After reading a few books on preparing for the non-financial aspects of retiring, I listed all the things I enjoyed doing in the past, ...that I currently enjoyed, ...what I wanted to do once I retired.
I mostly took pictures of people but I always tried to get a different perspective that would make the image more interesting and people told me I should do photography on the side so I started shooting in color and doing weddings, senior portraits, parties, etc. I really enjoyed the challenges of working with people; trying to understand what they desired and I adapted to include their personal ideas along with the formal and prescribed pictures. During the 90's I concentrated more on my responsibilities at UPS and photography faded into the background with me only taking a few color film pictures here and there for our vacations and other special events.
When I turned 55 in 2009 I realized that I needed a passion and purpose in my life when door #3 (retirement) opened for me. After reading a few books on preparing for the non-financial aspects of retiring, I listed all the things I enjoyed doing in the past, ...that I currently enjoyed, ...what I wanted to do once I retired.
Photography was on all three lists.
I started shooting again and the candle has flamed into a fire (a consuming fire according to my wife Sandra). The biggest difference now is that I shoot entirely in digital and I find I enjoy the post-shot production which allows one to create images that are comparable in color and detail to film and to do some things one could never do with film.
