My father was a talented and dedicated amateur photographer. He chronicled the lives of his family and friends, as well as the extensive travels that he and my mother were able to take after we kids were grown. I became fascinated with photography in high school, and spent many satisfying hours in college taking black-and-white photos of sports and nature, and then developing and printing them in the college photo lab. Years later, the arrival of my own family brought me back to photography, but not as intensely as in my younger years. I clung to film and all of its limitations long after my more astute friends had gone digital. But the arrival in recent years of affordable (well, almost affordable) high-end digital SLRs changed my world entirely and rekindled my passion for photography. I was suddenly able to return to the comfort of a satisfyingly large and heavy SLR (currently a Nikon D2xs) with a superb auto-focus telephoto lens, while at the same time adapting to and harnessing the astonishing power of high-end digital photography and printing. Once the technical transition from film to digital had been made (and a working knowledge of Photoshop Lightroom acquired), I realized how exciting photography could be again. I have no studio. I shoot almost entirely in available light. I prefer candids to formal portraits. Please don’t ask me to do weddings. But I get enormous pleasure from capturing the wonder in each moment: the preposterous beauty of a butterfly, the contagious twinkle in a child’s eye, the delicate flick of a conductor’s wrist, the unrehearsed beauty of nature, the vibrant decadence of an orchid, the delicate play of light on water. If this sounds like something that you or your family or your fine arts organization would be interested in having me capture for you, please let me know. Carl M. Jenks Contact Carl