My Story

Some people like to know who they're dealing with. Others could care less. I suppose if you're in the latter category, you're not even reading this. But for the rest of you...

I've been a 'photographer' since I was eight. I'm now fifty-something.

My first camera was a little Kodak that took 127 roll film. I 'earned' that camera in the third grade. It was the prize of my choice for selling magazine subscriptions. I sold magazine subscriptions to family and neighbors until I qualified!

Right from the start I did things differently. I didn't line people up, put them in the sunshine, and ask them to smile. I shot candids! Some of the first pictures I did showed people caught unaware, involved in doing something. My dad, my little sister, my grandmother. I even started doing setups with our kitten, trying to get it to cooperate while I attempted to photograph it in a wicker laundry basket.

That little Kodak was fine, but I wanted a flash camera. My grandmother saw my interest in photography and got me an Ansco 620 roll film flash outfit the following Christmas. I was in the fourth grade and quickly learned that taking flash candids could get you into trouble!

I photographed my father working at his desk. When the flash went off and the 'candid' wasn't a secret any more, he told me I should be careful. That he could have been working on some classified material from his job!

Another time I took my camera to school and caught my 4th grade teacher talking to a couple of classmates before class started that morning. The way she said "I want to see that, mister!" made me afraid to ever bring it in to show to her. But later that day, she had me shoot group shots of the class in front of some of the displays. They turned out pretty nice considering I was nine years old and it was a point and shoot camera. The big film size and M-3 flashbulbs helped!

For the next several years, I'd shoot pictures now and then, but my interests had turned to other things. Then, in 1967, while in college, something happened to me. Maslow would call it a "peak experience" and others a "natural high" - but suddenly, the world looked different, more alive, and as I walked the woods and read Thoreau, I wanted to capture and show others the beauty that was out there. So I borrowed my dad's 35mm rangefinder (I believe it was a Minolta Hi-Matic7) and starting shooting slides.

Reading the really great and inspiring photo magazines of that era, U.S. Camera and Camera 35, I started thinking that I could do freelancing for a living. The heck with getting my CPA, joining the FBI, and chasing draft dodgers! Life was better than that. So I picked up the new Minolta SRT-101 that had just come out, paid more for the 'extra glass,' a 1.4 lens to get the available light 'advantage' I'd read about in the magazines, started processing Ektachrome using E-2/E-3 kits, set up a black and white darkroom in the bathroom 'as needed,' and took pictures every chance I got. Nature slides in the fields and woods, and 'journalistic' black and white everywhere else. David Douglas Duncan and W. Eugene Smith were my heroes. By the time I left college, I had my first photo published and won my first photo contest. Tiny feats, for sure, but I had my foot, heart, and mind in the business!

Of course, I knew where I was heading after graduation in 1969, and sure enough, my draft notice came not long after my B.S. was secured. I agreed to do an extra year in the Army to get into photo school - even turned down OCS a couple of times - and after basic spent 13 weeks, 8 AM - 5 PM learning photography 'Army style' at the Signal Corps Center, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

A Signal Corps photographer was expected to handle anything, so they taught us everything - from 'grip 'n grin' award ceremonies (great training for wedding photography), to view camera work, photojournalism, 'environmental' portraiture, infrared surveillance, and taking aerials from the skid of a helicopter in a war zone!

After three months of 8 hour training days, I graduated at the top of my class. They were considering keeping me on as an instructor, but the photo school would be closing; after a big war-time build up, the military was starting to cut back so I ended up at Fort Benning, Georgia, then at Tan Son Nuit airbase, Saigon, as a photographer with the First Aviation Brigade, Viet Nam.

There was little to do, photograpically, with the war winding down for the U.S., but I did what was needed, mostly photos for a magazine our Public Information Office put out, and took photos of my own when I could - usually on Sundays around Saigon, or enroute to or from other areas on assignment... "from the Delta to the DMZ." I got some good stuff that way but when I got home, Viet Nam was dead horse and nobody wanted them. Someday I might just put them up on a website so that those with any interest in that time or place can get a look at some very good work.

Once back from 'Nam' with the military cutting back its active strength, the Army gave me the option of an early discharge. So I got 11 months (nearly that whole extra year I agreed to for photo school) cut from my active duty time!

My first thought, when I returned home, was working for a newspaper. But the locals weren't hiring photographers. So I started taking and marketing my own stuff, and shooting weddings, kids, and models, and expanding into macro, micro, and studio work.

Now, some 30 years later, I've taken a lot of pictures of a lot of different things and have had my work published in books, magazines, and other media, world-wide. I also owned a stock photo agency for 10 years, and sell my work through a half-dozen agencies, today. In 1988 I started publishing photo freelance guides, then, in 1990, a print newsletter, called Photo Lines, that ran for four years. It's the name I gave this website in 1999.

In short, I've spent a 'lifetime' in photography with all its ups, downs, and changes, and I still do it, today. I guess I love it!

Larry Stepanowicz

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