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I’ve had a love of photography since I shot my first wedding at the age of 16.They were family, and I wanted to make a good impression. I shot 50 black and white pictures and processed them in my tar-paper darkroom in our basement in West Virginia. I made 5×7 enlargements and charged them $35 for the whole package.

As I grew older, the cameras got more sophisticated and so did my knowledge of photography. A car accident put me on crutches for a year, so I entered and successfully completed a correspondence course at the New York Institute of Photography. Today, after six decades of successes and failures, going from Kodak to Hasselblad, keeping a darkroom and then doing without, and the most important one – going from the film world to the digital one. I stubbornly held onto my expensive film equipment until it was worth nothing and then decided to dip my toe into the digital water.

I quit doing weddings – let someone else do that – and decided to take pictures of God’s Creation with my beginner digital camera, the Nikon D40. It was great for flowers and pets that stand still but not so much for sports and birds. What started the keen interest in nature photography, for me and thousands of others, were the realistically-priced lenses by Tamron that zoomed to the 500mm range. It was then possible for people of all types and abilities to become skillful photographers.

I am honored to be a recognized member of the local community of nature photographers – showing my work at local libraries, festivals, and nature centers.

It takes a lot of practice to capture birds in flight and deer on the run and patience to sit for hours waiting for an eagle to fly. The effort is worth it, folks.

Thank you for visiting my website.

-Rusty