pam southworth's photostream  

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and am a relative newbie to flickr. I was an avid photographer growing up and shot a lot of high school sports for my local weekly paper at $5 a published picture. Some of my fondest memories are of my dad teaching me to develop and print B&W photos in our basement in Connecticut.

My interest in photography drifted for many years until my husband enrolled me in a two-day nature photography course early this year. I found that textures fascinate me and this has drawn me into close-up photography and macros. I roam around this beautiful part of the world -- and wish I had more time to do so.

Being part of flickr teaches me new ways of seeing and, importantly, helps me focus on editing photographs. It's so easy in this digital age to hoard thousands of photos but to not really look at individual shots closely. Selecting, editing and processing photos for this medium is absorbing far more of my time than I would have thought, and I enjoy every minute of it (except when my computer is slow). I am a dinosaur when it comes to Photoshop and use it only for tweaking. On extreme macros, the "healing tool" is my new best friend.

With flickr, there's enormous satisfaction in seeing what so many other talented and diverse people are creating all over the world and enjoying great work we might otherwise never see. I'm very grateful to my flickr friends for taking the time to visit and comment on my pictures.

This is a great way to learn -- and that's really what it's all about., isn't it?