(what) about bob (?)

My dad was a lifelong photo enthusiast and one-time president of the now defunct Seattle Photographic Society. Thanks to his inspiration I started taking pictures when I was about 7 years old. The first camera I remember owning was a little gray Kodak Instamatic - that would have been in the early 70's. By 5th grade I was developing and printing black & white film in my school's darkroom and in dad's darkroom at home. Most of it turned out pretty bad. Regular summer vacations in the Canadian Gulf Islands gave me lots of opportunities to waste film, and occasionally get a decent picture. In my twenties I got into shooting slides and actually managed to turn out a few decent ones. Over the next 20 years I shot in the western US, Canada, Greece, Italy, France, London, New Zealand and Mexico. Occasionally a musician or band would hire me for a promo photo, but 99% of the time I was shooting purely for pleasure.

In 2004 I got my first decent digital camera (Nikon D70) immediately before a trip to London, where I discovered the joy of filling up memory cards and hard drives. I don't think I've shot a single frame of film since, and I certainly don't miss the long hours spent on my feet in the darkroom. Recently (August 2008) I upgraded to a Nikon D300. Lately my main field of study has been lighting - it's an uphill battle but anything worthwhile is. I've been doing quite a bit of work for hire recently, shooting architectural, portrait and location material for both print and web. When I'm not playing with cameras I'm a partner at Cultivate Design, where I design for the web and print, and develop (program) for the web.

This is the third or fourth generation of my portfolio site. Screens keep getting bigger and so do the images posted here, though there are probably a number of older images here I haven't got around to resizing yet. You'll notice three options for sorting. "Date shot" is pretty self-explanatory. "Last updated" is there because I've been working my way backwards through a lot of scanned film (over 2000 black & whites), so the latest material here may have been shot quite a while ago. Regular visitors will probably find this the most useful. "Bob's order" is simply my own attempt to push whatever I'm currently into to the top of the pile.

One last thing - please don't steal my images. I'm happy to let you use many of them for most non-commercial purposes IF YOU ASK - email me at bob at blackitty dot net - but if you do so without permission it's a crime, and if I find out I'll send lawyers after you. If you're interested in a print I have a nice Epson that produces beautiful results, and I'd be happy to give you a price depending on the size you're looking for.

Enjoy the work. Better yet, go take some pictures.