OOAK Digital Gallery's photostream

-- Creative Information Architect --
Thirty-plus years in communications, graphics, design, marketing and entrepreneurism. Twenty-plus years in technology, web development, new media and writing: technical, social and outdoor/nature. Outdoor recreation communicator: writer, photographer, videographer, illustrator, designer. Lifelong avid outdoorsman, recreationalist, conservationist, activist and educator. BSc AgScience Purdue University (Fisheries & Aquatic Science/Communications). Active member Outdoor Writers Association of America.

---- The Story Behind OOAK Digital Gallery ------------------

OOAK, as a name was first conceived in 1978. I didn't do much with it but work on a logo for the name and determined that it would be an outlet, maybe a gallery, for extreme limited quantity, hand-made art. Art made by me. Finally I stepped up and formed OOAK Gallery in 1984 as an outlet for my traditional pen & ink, watercolors, serigraphs, block printing, calligraphy and photography.

By the end of 1994 I was working with a first generation Apple Macintosh computer and designing my first digital graphics.

The name OOAK is pronounced (OO.. like the double 'oo's in 'hoot' and the ACK like the 'ack' in 'hack'). The name is an acronym for One-Of-A-Kind. At that time no one else was using that name.

Thus, my OOAK Gallery was the very first use of the acronym for a business dealing with art and the first to use the name online; since 1993.

I procured the Internet Domain: OOAK.COM, originally in 1993 when all domains were still FREE for the filing. Then I purchased it, when it became mandatory, in March 1995 .. along with my other two original Domains: NET500.COM and MORIVEX.ORG (now defunct).

I nearly lost the OOAK.COM Domain in 1997 when I let it lapse and the Hobie company makers of the Hobie Cat sailboats picked it up. But one year later, lucky for me, Hobie, dropped the ball and I was able to get it back. I have owned it ever since.

In 1990 I returned to school to get that college degree - as I came to refer to it my 'go card' - that I had so erroneously - and foolishly! - called, "unecessary". I began mid-semester, in January of 1990. It was in the 3rd week of January that I found what I had been looking for since early 1974 and it was to be called the Internet.

In the late '80s, I began working with these software programs, while they were still in their infancy: Aldus Pagemaker, Fontagrapher, Freehand, Corel Draw, Photoshop and more. They were several years from the time when they would become essential elements of the newly developing world of Digital Graphics.

In 1994, ten years after finding the Mac, 15 years after taking off on a professional photography career and 4 years after finding my way out of "TRON", I began working in earnest to develop a complete digital technique for producing all of my illustrations.

In 1998 I began writing my own plug-ins for the new version 5.0 of Photoshop. It was then that I discovered the real power of Photoshop. Since then I have experimented with a number of plug-ins and other programs and myriad techniques for the manipulation of photographic images.

OOAK Gallery became OOAK Digital Gallery in 2000 ... a new name to fit the new millennium and in line with the new direction of my art.

Over the past 7 years I experimented with a number of New Media Technologies. I feel I have finally gotten around to making a solid 'GO' at producing OOAK Digital eLithographs©® and ePhotogravure©® ... as well as the short story series found on Akilologos©.

Welcome to the Flickr portion of the OOAK Digital Gallery experience.

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