Once I took pictures with a Minolta SRT and hand loaded canisters of 35mm black and white film.

The dominance of color in 80's and 90's ended that hobby for the time. Getting stuff back from a lab wasn't as fun as pulling prints in a closet sized darkroom.

Now with the maturing of digital options, cameras and post processing, I found an old friend again. It started with a trip to Kyoto in 2007 with a little Pentax Optio S4 tucked in an Altoids tin. I had the gift of having a week with my daughter, who had lived in Kyoto off and on for two years and is fluent in Japanese, as my guide. It also helped that she is as avid a photographer as me, so she had total patience with stopping and shooting a 100 shots of an anime themed truck, or dithering over trying to get reflections on a pond during a "light up" at a Temple just so.

Kyoto is a photographer's gift: everybody takes pictures, so no-one gets anxious about where, when or whether. And it's easily the most photogenic city in the world (sorry Venice and Paris, but it's true).

On return home I found myself wanting a little more flexibility over the Optio, so graduated to a Canon G9 which evolved into a 11 on a trip to Sedona. I was determined not to open up my OCD to the option of collecting glass. But, then I tried getting shots of an Egret rookery after sunset and just couldn't get lowlight results. So things just grew from there and now I have kit (a 5D MkIII and a bag of glass) that leaves no excuses but doesn't make me better, just makes me work harder to justify all the investment.

While I have no illusions about going pro, I am delighted when people request prints. If you see something that interests you email me and we can work out specifics. 

Since I live in a small rural area of the North Oregon Coast, I've first became obsessed with the landscape that surrounds me but gradually slid  into my current primary focus on big birds. 

Unbroken Sunlight comes from getting my daughter to design a Hanko stamp for my prints. In playing around with my name she came up with Japanese characters that could mean that. Living in a rain forest the thought tickled me. Just that simple

連綿晛 (RenMenKen) レンメンケン "unbroken (or uninterrupted) sunlight"