I have been involved with photography since I was 11 years old. A neighbor had a "chemical" darkroom where he taught me to develop the film and print black and white pictures. Being intrigued with "creative" image making, I placed model airplanes I made in the grass or bushes and photographed the crash scene. As a geophysicist I traveled all over the world---one year from the high Arctic Islands to the Antarctic to the Greenland ice cap, taking pictures all the time. Two years ago, after becoming fascinated with digital photography, I built up a "digital darkroom" capability with much of the latest hardware (D1x, Epson 2000P and 1280 printers, Dell 2GHz computer, etc.) and software (Photoshop 7, DigitalPro, Nik-sharpening, etc.). Now I am very much involved with the local camera club (Livermore Valley Camera Club, CA), where many of my prints have done well competing with prints from film cameras.