Hello From Connecticut via West Coast!

[julie nightingale]

Hello all,
I just ran across this site and am very pleased to be here. And exited to see so many people who share my passion ... I love large format photography just about as much as I love my family and my dogs. I Went to a technical school, Brooks Institute in California to learn the photography trade and have been shooting ever since. Mostly large format. 8X10, 4X5, and 2 1/4.

I have been in the photography business for 30 years and have had commercial studios for most of that time. I had a commercial "break down" in 1995 when digital arrived on the scene and the only way I could compete in my market was to invest 100K for a pre-leaf camera system. So I shut my studio down and did odd jobs for about one year. I painted pipes for the government, laid bricks and actually drove a UPS truck until I hit an employees car. Then I got an in-house gig for a large corporation and did their commercial photography for 1 year. I had a hard time being told what to, (only because I had been independent for so long) so I quit, switched gears and ramped up the fine art side of my business. I started to show the 8X10 polaroid transfers I had been shooting and different publishers wanted to license them. So I managed to get a name in the gift market and actually made a descent living off of my artwork for a number of years. I have been slacking off a little lately and have not even put up a web site because I am not sure what I want to sell ...

But anyway it is refreshing to see a forum that is not totally dedicated to equipment and digital bs, glad to join you here and I will try to contribute when I can!

[matthew blais]

Hi Julie..great to have you here.
Nice intro..

[AJ Edmondson]

Hello Julie... sounds as if you have indeed "paid your dues" and there seem to be a lot of folks on this site who can relate to that. Welcome and good luck!

[Jim Galli]

A Westie in the East. Welcome. Glad someone was smart enough to walk away from the $100,000 digi gig. A D200 would do more at this point. I've got my feet in both worlds but it's easy to see where my heart is at.

[Richard M. Coda]

Welcome Julie.

Sounds like an interesting career. Do you have a website?

Rich

[Brian Ellis]

Welcome Julie.

Sounds like an interesting career. Do you have a website?

Rich

" . . . I have been slacking off a little lately and have not even put up a web site because I am not sure what I want to sell ... "

[julie nightingale]

Hi you guys and gals,
Thank you for your welcomes! And thank you Brian for answering Richard's question about a web site. No I don't have one, and my husband builds and manages them for a living, I should be embarrassed! I had one really early on and then I got disgusted with it and shut it down ... but I have reserved and paid for "julienightingale.com" for the last 10 years ... (getting an idea how I operate?). I tend to over engineer almost everything and I get confused with all of my images and how to organize them. For almost 20 years I used to just hand the 4X5 transparencies over to the art director and get onto the next shoot. And yes I am the type that just threw my slides and all my personal and creative stuff in a box, but they always haunted me. Now that I have to account for every image I take digitally, I have turned this process into something similar to building a land cruise missile. I guess it would be wise to start some where.

But if you want to see some of the images, (crap) that has been published google julie nightingale. I say crap because they always choose safe pretty shots. I like to shoot, or try to shoot the kind that get some sort of a rise out of some one, somewhere! Again thank you guys for welcoming me here and I feel kind of at home here.

[John Kasaian]

Welcome foro sunny (and broke!) California