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June NoBS Member of the Month - Photosensitive
She is the sage of our hallowed halls of NoBS. Quick to dispense her hard-won knowledge and no-nonsense common sense, photosensitive (Denise) is a trusted and well-admired member of the NoBS community. It is with great pleasure that she is bestowed the honor of June's NoBS Member of the Month. Here is her story:
"I received an Olympus OM-1 as a Christmas present in 1975 and have had a camera in my hand pretty much ever since - that first camera was a HUGE awakening for me! Suddenly I was more than a wife, daughter, sister; I was a 'photographer.' Yeah, it was definitely love at first 'light'"
I greedily devoured everything I could find about photography (oh, to have had the resources of today?s internet 20+ years ago!) - I took college courses, I attended workshops (most memorable: Michael Kenna and Ruth Bernhard!), I practically lived in the photo galleries and museum, always looking, studying work I admired!
I've had the good fortune to experience most of my photographic development (pun intended) while living in San Francisco, CA - a large urban center offers a wealth of resources: museums and galleries galore, universities, professional shops and associations.
I developed a passion for photographic history and an intense curiosity with how some photographers constantly stretch the boundaries of the medium. I've also been fascinated with the role of women throughout the history of photography as photographer, subject and muse.
I was an amateur, photographing strictly for my own pleasure, for almost 20 years before I had another epiphany just before my 40th birthday - life is too short to NOT spend it doing something you love. (My mother's sudden death from cancer and my own cancer surgeries were the catalyst for this shift in thinking.)
Two years of community college photo courses fueled my photographic fire (say that 3 times real fast!) and I started assisting commercial shooters in SF - a FABULOUS experience more valuable than university any day! In between commercial assignments, I worked with a couple of portrait photographers who essentially mentored me into the portrait business. I can't talk about portrait photography without mentioning Monte Zucker and the enormous impact he had on my portrait photography - his talent, his energy and his generosity as a teacher and a human being are unsurpassed in my experience.
Twenty plus years later, I'm not the famous "art photographer" I thought I would be, but I'm proud to know that my images hang in family rooms and are cherished by those who own them - accolades enough for me!
My husband is retired now, which makes me semi-retired (working cuz I want to - actually working to support my photography habit!) I suppose I'm getting my business going in my new home town, but limiting the time spent on it so I can spend more time with my husband and concentrate on the kind of image-making that drew me into photography in the first place.
Okay, what NoBS means to me. First and foremost, NoBS represents Community to me. I have always sought out and enjoyed the company of other photographers - there's something invigorating about associating with people who LOVE what they are doing! Community is about sharing with each other, supporting each other - and this happens daily on NoBS without anybody's ego getting in the way. Now that I no longer live in the SF Bay Area, NoBS is my professional community - it's where I can go for answers to questions, where I can find answers to questions I haven't asked yet (gotta LOVE that!), where I can count on my peers to honestly critique whatever I put in front of them!