My life-long enjoyment with "taking pictures" became a more studied interest in the artistic side of photography after I took a landscape and nature photography class through a local (Montgomery County, MD) adult education program and joined the Gaithersburg Camera Club (http://gaithersburgcameraclub.org) in January of 2000. The club's newsletter editor for many years, I also helped coordinate our monthly member competitions and am currently the club secretary. When I joined the club I shot with a old Nikon SLR EM camera that had been my father's, using Kodak print or Fuji slide film. I later converted a lot of those negatives and slides to digital files with a Nikon Coolscan IV (then a Coolscan V) and Adobe Photoshop Elements, printing with an Epson 1280 inkjet on Epson papers. It was the purchase of a digital point and shoot for a trip "down under" in January of 2004 that was my first step into a continuing adventure with digital photography. I was so lucky to be part of a camera club during the industry's transformative period from film to digital photography. My first DSLR, Nikon's D70, was followed by a D300, D5100, and D5500, along with some other brands: a Konica Minolta with some early vibration control, and an all-in-one Lumix that shot RAW. Now (2020) I'm using Nikon's D750 and D7500 and Olympus's E-M10-ii and EM5-iii (Yes, I'm moving toward lighter equipment and am debating selling one of the Nikon cameras). I have a seldom-used Lumix p&s, but love my Apple 8+ for fun shooting. After the second repair of the Epson R1800 that followed my 1280, I replaced it with Epson's P400. I continue to find the creative possibilities of the "digital darkroom" more and more stimulating, though time-consuming, and the file managing aspects are often overwhelming. My subjects are usually nature-related, but mainly I shoot what I like for the pure fun of it, and I'm delighted when others enjoy the results. I'm a retired public school teaching assistant and live in Rockville, Maryland, with an ornery cat. I have two married children and four grandchildren who are my viewfinder's favorite moving targets.