Romair's photostream  

VIEW ALL MY IMAGES ON FLUIDR






I'm male and very much taken...


I've been a photo enthusiast since 1948, when I received a Kodak Brownie Flash 620 for my 14th birthday, and I gradually worked my way up to my first SLR, a Nikon F, and have been a Nikon user ever since, though the most important camera in my life was this one: The camera that started it all. I did serve a brief stint as a wedding photographer for the Hartford, Connecticut branch of a large New York studio back in the 1960s, using a Speed Graphic with 120 film and a 2-1/4x3-1/4 inch film back on it, plus a monstrously heavy Braun strobe unit; but otherwise, I've been purely an amateur. Automation was not a word applied to photography in any way in those days, and the only mode was manual. Photographers had to either eyeball the light or use a hand held exposure meter (I eyeballed for many years before getting a meter) to set our f-stops and shutter speeds. We also had to calculate flash settings, using guide numbers, and, impossible as it may seem to photographers starting out today, we usually ended up with dead-on exposures. Be that as it may, I gratefully latched on to as much automation as manufacturers could stuff into their cameras, and I am now the happy owner of a Nikon D90, with a D70 as a back-up, and my 18-200mm VR lens has replaced many of my older lenses, though nothing will ever replace my Nikkor 105mm micro lens or my 50mm f1.8. I shoot exclusively in RAW format, using either aperture priority or, when the lighting is tricky, manual mode. The images I upload consist of a hodgepodge of all sorts of different subjects I've photographed throughout the 60+ years that I've been squeezing shutter buttons (O.k., I know that, to be with it, I'm supposed to say "images I've captured" instead of "subjects I've photographed," but y' gotta cut me some slack here; remember, I'm an old feller...}

I have also been having a lot of fun with Photoshop Elements which, with a couple of essential plug-ins - curves and a layer mask - I find to be such a powerful image editing program that I have neither the need nor the desire to "upgrade" to the full Photoshop version. Every image that I have ever posted to Flickr has been run through PSE, mostly to tweak exposure and white balance, but you'll find some that have been manipulated clear beyond the realm of reality. It's all in fun, and that's all I'm here for: FUN.

Regarding groups, especially those that require comments or faves, I have found that those I have joined (far too many), while fun, have proved to be too time consuming. I do comment regularly on other Flickr photos, and I very much enjoy doing so, but I mainly search through my contacts for images that catch my eye and comment on them because I truly feel they deserve a comment, not because of some group requirement. So, if I don't accept your invitation to join a group, please understand; as much as I may like to join you, I simply don't have the time.

I was born and raised in New England, but after 30 years of putting up with that region's inhospitable climate, my pregnant wife Sammy, our year-old son and our two German shepherds piled into our brand new 1967 Chevy Bel Aire station wagon, after selling our home in Connecticut, and headed west to sunny California. I didn't have a job waiting for me, but we knew we desperately wanted to escape to that mild Mediterranean climate, and we had faith it would all work out; and It did, far beyond our expectations.