Michael Firstlight

I fell in love with photography back in the mid-1960's with my first camera - a white Polaroid Swinger at age 8. Boy, did I work for that camera by saving up S&H Green (Grocery) stamps for months! I had GAS even that long ago LOL.

Fast forward to age 12 when my parents bought me a cheap plastic enlarger and film developing kit for Christmas. I was in love after developing my first roll of Verichrome from a 126 Kodak Instamatic I snagged from the local five-and-dime, and made about a dozen 4x6" B&W prints.

Of course, that led to a better camera - a little Ricoh 500G rangefinder, then my first SLR, a Canon FTb, and eventually my beloved Nikon F2as that I used for the next few decades. My darkroom went from that plastic enlarger (which used a flash-light bulb and four C-size batteries), to a Bogen T-35 and finally to a Durst M-601 by the time I was in HS.

I was a prolific shooter throughout high school. Folks would tell you I was never without a camera, but I was also fairly transparent as it allowed me to melt seamlessly into to every social group in a very large school. I shot about 10,000 frames of Tri-X, was the HS yearbook and newspaper photographer (also the same in college), did mini exhibits of my work, freelanced for the local newspapers, political campaigns etc. I feared doing color until Cibachrome came out and fell in love with it, but wasn't very proficient. I suffered with fairly minimal gear in my early life, save for the F2as, only one lens (a 50mm), and a decent 35mm enlarger- but that was about it. I didn't have much in the way of financial resources.

I decided I wanted to chase photography as a career, so I majored in a photography and film making in a 4-year BA degree program in college. I didn't finish that program as I switched to being a Communications major at another college and expanded my scope to broadcasting and journalism, but kept on with the photography. I graduated and went to work for one of the three big TV networks right out of school. There I did freelance photography - mostly promotional composites for famous broadcast personalities, while working there on live sets as a Page. I soon decided all that glittered in network television wasn't gold, so I quit, went back for my graduate degree in computer science, and while in school, got a job with the largest multi-national computer behemoth as a corporate staff photographer. I shot thousands of frames per month there - everything from boring head shots to bacteria growing on microchip substrates, large format images of entire computer data centers staged in huge white rooms (for advertising images and brochures). While there I was taught how to build massive computer-assisted multimedia shows for large corporate events using sequenced Kodak Ektagraphic slide projectors.

I had used a CP/M-driven AVL Eagle computer, which was about the same size as the original IBM PC about a year or two before the first IBM PC rolled off the line. I used the AVL to sequence two dozen Kodak slide projectors to dramatic soundtracks. The first Eagle computers were produced by Audio Visual Labs (AVL), a company founded by Chuck Kappenman in New Jersey in the early 1970s to produce proprietary large-format multi-image equipment. Those computer sequenced projectors driven by the Eagle were used to create massive 40-foot long by 20-foot high rear-projection multimedia extravaganzas. These were stunning, heart-stopping Hollywood-class analog multimedia productions for major corporate events, hosting thousands of employees, years before the emergence of mainstream computer-based multimedia as we know it today, became possible.

Unfortunately, the company decided to farm out the entire internal imaging operation. I had the opportunity to take a job in technical writing that combined my computer science and journalism education. Since I had experience with imaging and hybrid computer/analog multimedia production, and had exclusive access to the first-ever PCs that could digitize video and audio before they became available to the public, I published an invention disclosure for the first digital video player embedded in a hypertext book browser using structured markup about three years before the web existed and the first web browser, Mosaic, came into existence.

On the photography front I lost interest for a few years while being so deep into computers; my darkroom stood idle. Then I saw a colleague with an early DSLR - a Kodak DCS. I was stunned. My first digital camera a few years later was a Nikon N950 followed by a Nikon N990, and then a Nikon D1x that cost a stunning $5400 for a 6MP camera. I had just graduated to a MF film shortly before those - a Pentax 67II, and later a Nikon ED8000 scanner, so I was shooting both digital and analog - and mostly scanning the film and printing on a a small format HP ink jet - which seemed like magic.

I began to shoot again regularly, and did a few large exhibits - typically about 50 13x19 color and B&W prints each. The quality of the work was fair - I've never through my work outstanding, but decent. I joined the Professional Photographers of North Carolina (PPNC) State association so that I could take the in-person classes and symposiums offered by working professionals. Let me tell you, this isn't the PPA - it is a challenge to get into one of the State association; you must currently work for or be personally sponsored by an established professional studio. At best, you can get a one year student membership that isn't renewable or an aspiring one - which also expires and isn't renewable. It isn't that it’s an exclusive club of some sort, nor does it indicate anything about quality of work or competence of the members, but the competitions are brutal and the images jaw dropping when you tour the surviving competition gallery for the subset of images that makes it past the stiff judging by a team of studio pros. I am talking the best of the best work from hundreds of full-time working studios in the region. My work isn’t bad, but I'd not even try to compete as my work might garner a score of 6 or 7 at best and not make and 8 or higher minimally required to get into the annual show exhibit space. Maybe I improve to that level, someday.

Having a full-time career in high-tech, I don't have the time to be full-time working pro - nor could it remotely generate the kind of income I make as a senior software engineer with decades of experience - so it’s an avocation for me. I get hired on occasion to do large jobs that I can contain. I've produced 30-foot by 12-foot indoor murals for the Army Corp of Engineers for visitor centers, which are gigapixel images comprised of 100+ 36MP frames stitched to create an image you can walk up to, put your nose up to the image, and see Bambi's eyelashes in the woods in a spectacular sunrise. These are not billboard images viewed from hundreds of feet away. I currently sell my work in local multi-tenant artist/craft galleries - mostly 16x24" and 24x36" framed prints, and I sell on occasion to local businesses as wall art (e.g. real-estate offices etc.). In my home I've converted my garage to be a shooting studio for occasional portraits (I've been studying studio lighting for years and use mostly PCB Einstein monolights),

The trouble is my career - I manage a mind-boggling massive operation. I am responsible for the technology, processes, and governance for most of which the company I work for, publishes. My world involves thousands of writers/content creators, 35+ million pages in dozens of national languages in every conceivable form and channel (electronic and print) in support of an $80 billion enterprise in direct support of 3500+ products. I am looking forward to retirement in a few years and plan to go back to practicing photography for both the love of it and as for part-time income (unless I get sucked back into taking on too many - which I am prone to do .

In short, I am a lifelong student of the craft of photography and have learned long ago it is a bottomless well. For me it is an avocation, and more aptly a class of disease of which I prefer never to be cured.

Michael Firstlight