I've been taking pictures since my parents handed me an Instamatic to use on a family trip when I was seven (in 1978). I kept shooting and began to learn my way around the traditional darkroom in high school and college, but drifted away from actively pursuing photography when engineering classes and the rest of life started elbowing out more open-ended creative pursuits.
Technology helped me find my way back to photography. In 2001 I bought one of the then-new Nikon desktop film scanners and discovered that it was true: I could have a darkroom on the Mac in the corner of my tiny city apartment. I started re-learning what I could do with images, what I wanted to photograph, how I really saw things and what that meant.
Today I'm still working on the Mac in the corner, although nowadays it's the corner of the dining room of the house in Oakland that I share with my wife and daughter.
In addition to photography, I'm lucky to have a creative day job as an exhibit developer at Lawrence Hall of Science (Berkeley, California), where I design machines that children and families use as they explore science.
Technology helped me find my way back to photography. In 2001 I bought one of the then-new Nikon desktop film scanners and discovered that it was true: I could have a darkroom on the Mac in the corner of my tiny city apartment. I started re-learning what I could do with images, what I wanted to photograph, how I really saw things and what that meant.
Today I'm still working on the Mac in the corner, although nowadays it's the corner of the dining room of the house in Oakland that I share with my wife and daughter.
In addition to photography, I'm lucky to have a creative day job as an exhibit developer at Lawrence Hall of Science (Berkeley, California), where I design machines that children and families use as they explore science.
© Allan Ayres