A few years later I was assigned to the USS Skate. As it worked out they needed a ship photographer for a trip under the Artic Icecap, I volunteered, actually jumping at the chance. The sub had a Nikon F SLR with motor drive and several lenses; I quickly learned how to use the equipment. I shot a lot of panoramas through the periscope, a bit of a challenge as the scope severely limited the light, requiring 400ASA film and a push during development. Here is where I learned to make panoramas the manual way, cut curved lines, peal the back off one print and the front of another and glue them together to make one picture. How many of you remember doing that? The best part was that I could use it and all the camera equipment for personal use any time I wanted, and the Navy bought the film and paper. What a deal!

During my time on the Skate, I met my wife on a blind date. She saw my passion for photography and encouraged me to learn more. As life often does, I got busy with my career and photography took the back seat, relegated to vacations and some weekends. During this time I left the Navy, worked as a technician on a telephone main frame, eventually returning to the sea service by way of the Coast Guard. For me civilian life just did not work so well, a bit boring. At that time the Coast Guard offered the best deal, but still no Photojournalism. Twelve and a half years, two daughters and many stations later, I retired as a Senior Chief. With two daughters just starting school I had to have another paying job. I had little experience in Commercial Photography, so a good paying job in that field was far away.

After spending over ten years with Hamilton Standard, I was laid off during a downsizing operation. I still had tunnel vision on making enough to support the family, so photography remained in hobby status. After securing a position with a small manufacturing company in town as a Computer Technician turning into a Computer Services Manager, I got my first break in Photography. They wanted to bring the publication of their catalog in house. In doing so they needed someone to work with commercial photographers and printers to put together a new catalog. Of course, I JUMPED UP and took it as an additional task I had to learn Adobe PageMaker, Illustrator and Photoshop. Photoshop 4.0 was just being released.

Shortly thereafter I purchased my first digital camera, a Nikon CoolPix 950. After getting comfortable with using this new camera, I was enlisted to actually take the product photos. For the next 10 years I produced all pictures for all company literature and web site photos, even creating picture of products that we did not have as yet, from pictures of two or more other products.

The world of digital photography is a fast moving world. It did not take long until my 2 mega pixel (1600 x 1200 pixels) camera was superseded with 5 and 6 mega pixel cameras. I scraped together enough money to buy a CoolPix 5700. This was a major step in image quality from 2 Mega pixels to 5 Meg pixels. This changed resolution from 1600 x 1200 to a whopping 2560 x 1920.

From the time I purchased the CoolPix 950 through the CoolPix 5700, I always wanted a digital SLR camera with interchangeable lens. I knew that my next camera had to be the Canon 20D, since it had 8.2 mega pixel capture, on screen histogram and a nice range of image stabilized lenses. Hey the older we get the more image stabilization becomes a necessity not a luxury. By June 4, 2005 I had the funds and the ok to purchase the Canon 20D. Well a camera body is no good without a lens or two. I ordered the Canon 20D, a 75-300mm telephoto and a 17-85mm as a walk-a-round lens.

Now we are full time RVing and for the next few years we hope to spend at least one month in each state and photograph everything of interest to us and hopefully to others.