While
growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I’ve always had an interest in capturing
memories on print--usually with a borrowed camera--until I purchased my initial
camera in the early ‘90s. The very first photo I enlarged and framed for
my wall was a moment my Kodak preserved of Mirror Lake north of the Madison area during
autumn. Several years later I moved on to the Pentax Zoom, followed by the
purchase of an automatic camera I really liked, the Nikon Lite Touch.
After
hiking in the Superstition Mountain Wilderness while vacationing in Arizona, I
chose to relocate to Scottsdale in July of 1998. This is
really when my amateur photography hobby began. Everyone said I shot great
photos; that I had an “eye” for capturing beautiful places. Those photos filled
up over ten huge photo albums when I finally taught myself Photoshop and
FrontPage in May of 2001 and published
hikingallery.net
(formerly .com with godaddy who sold my domain without warning) scanning in every one of my favorite photos sorted
according to the season and/or location each were taken. Afterwards I realized
my images really didn’t display the greatest quality so I invested in a decent
digital camera in March of 2004, the Fuji FinePix S7000. (I shot all my images
raw, then convert to tif for printing and jpg for the website.)
In July of 2004 I visited
Zion National Park, and the following September found me in Southern Utah. I
hiked all over Zion and began working for a local resort as a hiking guide.
Many photos were taken on hikes in these spectacular areas; hence the ”Canyon
Country” section of
hikingallery.net. Currently Hikin’ Gallery holds over 5000 photos.
Now since godaddy sold my domain name while I was on vacation (no auto-renew and I
was upset), I had to republish to
my past host, Doteasy and they were fabulous taking me back.
Having to carefully choose prints in the fall of 2005 for the first art festival
I participated in gave me an idea to publish another website that is not up any
longer as of 2015. And about 10 years ago I had upgraded to the Fuji FinePix
S9100/S9600 when my S7000 had an accident with a tree! I was very happy
with the upgrade :) However, it crashed in our q-hut home after taking pics of
the wind generator being built :( so some of my latest pics are from my cell phone
but purchased a dust-proof/waterproof Fuji which works great on pics and videos.
I don't (saying this again) plan to any more updates after this one in 2016.
After
I met my match, Jim, in June of 2008 we were married! Jim (and his geeky geology side :)) has taken me on more wild hiking
adventures and we began creating "The Great Basin/Basin & Range" section launched in 2009
and updated in 2012.
Our honeymoon on the Southwater Caye in Belize was fabulous so I had to share
the snorkeling and fun in the new Belize section designed in November 2008, and
for
our 2nd honeymoon we chose to drive over 5000 miles round-trip to Milwaukee from
LaVerkin,
hiking and photographing along the way; another section published in 2009.
Of course my enthusiasm for hiking and
photographing (not as much, nor the art festivals) continues and I am looking forward to many more adventures with my
husband Jim, health permitting. To me it is the ultimate “high” absorbing
all of our Creator’s work and doing my best to capture special moments with
whatever
camera; to be able to reflect on those moments and share them with everyone!
What especially awes me is enlarging the beauty of a small delicate flower and
observe the details designed by our Number One Artist.
I need to add that I had foot surgery (bummer) so I haven't been doing too much
hiking lately, just walking & enjoying nature for now. My last camera smashed
into the wall after the wind generator installation so I had been using
dirt/dust-proof cameras lately, but recently purchased a Nikon 600 (Sept 2016)
that I am so looking forward to using!
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