I started doing photography at a pretty young age. I can’t tell you what year, but I’m sure it was in elementary school. My father was a professor of instructional technology and a talented amateur photographer. He had camera gear (including a big old Graflex) and a darkroom he would set up in the bathroom. He taught me to print black and white and he gave me good advice – that I probably didn’t appreciate nearly enough at the time. For example, he always told me to step closer to my subject. What he was really suggesting was that I had to think beyond how cool my subject seemed to me, and to visualize what it would ultimately look like as a print.

In high school I shot a lot of black and white, developing the film myself and printing at home or (better yet) using the equipment at school.

By the time I was in my mid-twenties I had acquired a couple of Pentax 35mm cameras (MX and ME) along with a small set of lenses that I used a great deal on backpacking trips. On two-week trips my wife and I would often carry nearly 20 rolls of slide film.

As time went on I found that the camera gear was interfering with my backcountry experience. Eventually I stopped carrying the Pentax cameras and extra lenses. I gradually “slipped” to the point that I was carrying only a small Olympus Zoom camera and mostly just recording my experience, as opposed to making photographs.

Then came digital photography. I could take lots of photos and quickly see and edit them, learning quickly from the process. In addition, I could share pictures on the web. All of this rekindled my interest in photography...g dan mitchell photography