Since I was young, I’ve always been fascinated with photographically capturing the world around me. That has grown into an obsession to capture the beauty of the world around us as our eyes and mind see them.

Photography has been a passion for me for most of my life.  I was exposed to cameras, tripods, studio lighting, film canisters and so on by my father throughout my childhood.  My first real interest in photography developed watching my father photographing landscapes and family pictures when I was a boy.  His camera of choice was a Leica IIIf, which was part of a photo journalist set-up he had.  That camera, built in the late 1940's, still works today!  My father was a professional photographer by trade when he was young, but gradually migrated to photolithography used in the manufacturing integrated circuits in the aerospace industry.

As a teenager, I would often help my father on trips with his gear.  Occasionally, he'd explain to me the function of the controls on his camera and how he was using them to capture the image he saw.  At that time, my mom had a folding bellows camera that she didn't use much.  My father helped me to learn the basic's of photography with it (as I'm sure he really didn't want his teenage son “playing” with his Leica).  By my early teen's, I already had a notorious reputation for disassembling things to see how they worked.  Sometimes they didn't quite work when I was finished reassembling them.  This curiosity, however, is what eventually led me to a career in electrical engineering.

In high school, my parents gave me a Minolta SRT-102.  This was my first SLR camera, and the start of my photographic journey.  The only lens I had for a while was the 50mm f1.4.  The SRT-102 was a wonderful camera and the perfect vehicle for developing a solid understanding of photography.  Although it had a light meter, it was a fully manual camera.  Being manual, however, gave you full creative control of the image you captured.  Composition, focusing, depth of field, exposure compensation, shutter speed, aperture, ASA (as it was called back then) all had to be deliberately determined to get a good picture.  Let's not forget loading the film in a dark location to prevent light bleed.  Over time, I bought additional lenses, on-camera flash, tripods and other standard photographic equipment.  This was the set-up I used for almost 20 years.

In the mid 1990's my first experiences with a number of digital cameras did not convince me to give up my film based Minolta SRT-102.  The images these early digital cameras produced left a lot to be desired.  For a while, I still shot film, and then scanned images to get a "quality" digital versions.  Eventually, though, digital cameras became better.  The first digital camera I had access to that I thought took some really nice images was the Nikon Coolpix 950.  It was shy of 2MP (only 1600x1200 in resolution), but it performed reasonable well.  This camera was my entry into digital photography, and my SRT-102 started to fall out of favor. 

As I transitioned to digital photography in the early 2000's, I played with a number of cameras, including a Minolta DiMage 7.  Although the DiMage 7 still had several serious shortcomings, it introduced me to raw image capture as well as more sophisticated digital image editing.

It wasn't until I bought my Nikon D300, that I felt I had an enabling tool that really improved on the image quality of my old SRT-102.  The D300 propelled me to the next level in photography.  Photography had become much more than hobby for me.  As my photographic skills improved and interest in photography expanded I found myself looking for a better tool.  That realization led to pre-ordering the 36MP Nikon D800 and upgrading to full frame 'FX' lenses.  The Nikon D800 was used for many of the images on this site.  As time continues cameras continue to improve, and although the Nikon D800 is such a solid performer and I am still very happy with it, I now use a Nikon D850 for most of my work.  The 46MP Nikon D850 is an incredible camera and I am having to step up my game to fully exploit the capability and functionality that it has.

Although my photographic interests are broad and I engage in many types of photography, my passion remains landscape photography.  Of particular interest is capturing the natural beauty of the world we live in.  That said, I also thoroughly enjoy photographing challenging or technically difficult subjects.  Throughout the years, I have accumulated many many images.  A few of these images have become my favorites and I am using this site to share them with you in hope they can bring a moment of wonder, contentment or just some simple enjoyment.

- Norbert Daberko