Loren Zemlicka

I started taking photos in the early ’80s with a 110 film camera I bought for 10¢ at a garage sale. The vast majority of rolls were black and white – 200 or 400, I can’t really remember… whatever was on sale at the time I suppose. I do remember the agonizing wait to get film processed. How did anyone survive before 1 hour processing and digital cameras?

The lack of flash cubes made the choice to be a “natural light” photographer an easy one. I shot a couple outdoor portraits here and there but most shots were of cows and barns and landscapes.

A few years later, I moved up to my parents’ brand new Ricoh 35mm with a telephoto lens. I began experimenting with double exposures, various focal lengths to get the desired blurry background (I would later learn this was called depth of field), and more than a few different angles of the same hickory nut or leaf I found particularly interesting. I can’t begin to surmise the amount of film used (wasted?) during those years, but the fact that my father didn’t retire five years earlier than he did is probably directly related to accumulated film costs.

I had my first dark room experience in middle school as a member of the photography club. I still have the first photo I developed somewhere in my basement… a close up (as macro as I could get with a 35mm lens) of a lamb’s ear plant covered with dew.

In my later college years, I moved to a film Olympus point and shoot, then to a slue of different digital point and shoots as the technology advanced. I think the Canon Digital Elph was my favorite just because it was so small.

After college, I pulled the trigger on my first Digital SLR – the original Canon EOS Rebel with an 18-55 kit lens and a cheap telephoto. Still, I hadn’t gotten “serious” about photography.

in late May, 2008, I took up photography as a “serious” hobby. I began with night photography – long exposures and experimenting with light. I learned a lot about the camera’s settings and functions to capture what I had in mind and to get the desired end results. It was then that I got a better camera and opened a Flickr account.

I have several photos that have been or currently are used on commercial and organization websites and a photo that is being used in a Norwegian commercial currently in post production. The highlight so far though, was being contacted by Time Magazine to use one of my photos in their 2008 Year-End issue.