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Message: <blockquote data-quote="johnwartjr" data-source="post: 5431" data-attributes="member: 2176">Long time listener, first time caller....I'm John, from Indiana.Back in the 90s, I worked for my Dad's photography business here in Southern Indiana, and was the Head Photographer at my High School. I had a blast running the darkroom.When I graduated, I had 2 directions I could go - IT and Photography. I had experience with both, and enjoyed both. I decided to go full steam ahead with IT, and have done pretty well in that endeavor. I've worked in the enterprise for over 10 years at this point, holding positions where I administered several hundred servers. In my current role, I work as part of a team that supports several thousand servers around the world.I gradually abandoned photography, and really lost interest when digital picked up steam. While I loved computers, I couldn't grasp the idea of a computer being my darkroom - the darkroom was the part of photography that I enjoyed the most. The serenity, the smells, the sounds, the cold damp atmosphere where you could sit and think, all the while turning out some awesome prints. Photography took a back burner and became more utilitarian to me than a form of art. Digital was great, if I wanted a quick photo of an item I was selling on eBay, or to take a couple snapshots of something, but I still lacked the desire to do much more than resize images on my PC.Eventually, the IT thing got to me, and I got to the point where I didn't want to work on computers all night after working on them all day at work, and I bought my first DSLR, a Nikon D60, with an 18-55 lens, and I bought a 55-200 lens to go with it as well. I started to enjoy taking pictures of my kids, parades, car shows, landscapes, really pretty much everything and anything. A few months later, I walked into a local Circuit City, when the chain was closing, and used a bonus from my job to buy their last D90 kit at a substantial discount. They still don't sell that cheap, almost 2 years later. I sold my D60, and picked up a SB900 and a 10.5 Fisheye lens.About a week and a half ago, I made the biggest purchase yet, a D700, 24-70 2.8 and a 70-200 2.8 VRII. I had forgotten how nice professional glass is - it's been awhile, after all. In late 96, I was shooting with a brand new F5 and 80-200 f/2.8D ED AF MK-IIII even keep one of my senior pictures around, from back when I had hair!<img src="http://johnwartjr.com/images/me.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />Earlier this year, I met another photographer while taking pictures of my kids in the park, and he invited me to a meeting of the local photography club, the Columbus Viewfinders. I've joined the club and learned a lot. I've even started to embrace that whole 'digital darkroom' thing, I picked up Lightroom 2 earlier this year, then upgraded to LR3, and picked up CS5. Can't do much of anything in CS5 yet, but I *love* LR3. CS5 came with a free 31 day trial of lynda.com - I'm on chapter 20 of 30 of the LR3 training. At this point, photography is just a passion. But I'm considering it as a 'plan b' - the IT world has changed in the last few years, and I'm not certain what the future will bring in it. I only worked for about 7.5 months of 2009, but have worked all of 2010 so far. Turning a hobby into a business has ruined other things I enjoyed in the past, I am nervous about that happening again.Other than photography, I enjoy spending time with my family, and restoring pinball machines. At any given time, I own around 20 machines. I've been enjoying hanging around the Nikonites site, and hope to contribute and learn as time progresses.</blockquote>

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