The Back Ground Story!

My name is Shelby Thomas, an amateur photographer from Washington, D.C. currently residing in Dayton, Ohio. Since about the age of 12 I've had this undying passion for taking pictures to immortalize the times and events of my life and the lives of everyone who I had come into contact with. From the first time that I had a roll of 35mm film developed, I knew that this was going to be something that I would be doing for life. As a freshman in college, I discovered Advantix film. The advantage to advantix was that you could just drop the film into a camera and be ready to shoot in seconds. I had to have take a thousand pictures that year alone. Sophomore year I moved away from still photography to explore the world of video. With my Sony Handycam in hand I shot videos of Thanksgivings, Christmases, Knoxville College homecomings, Step Shows, Greek come-down shows, I even tried to record a play that one of my friends was in until the playwright realized what I was doing and confiscated my video camera and told me that I could pick it up after the show was over. Dances, Parties, The Honda Bowl in Orlando, Florida (Shout out to Lonnie Jackson! LOL), graduations, barbecues, picnics, you name it I was there to shoot it. When people started to actually asking me to dub tapes for them, I knew that this could be a good extra money maker for me. During my video phase, I let the still camera sit by the wayside and didn't pick it back up until seven years later when my wife put my five-year-old son in a weekend soccer league. I needed a good still camera to capture the shear greatness that I just knew that my son was going to display on the soccer field. I ended up purchasing a Nikon D40 for about $350 used on Ebay. My son ended up being a mediocre soccer player, but the camera rekindled my past love for photography. I began to research photography clubs and organizations in the Dayton area to see if it would even be possible for me to broaden my love for photography into something more lucrative. After three group shoots with a GREAT group of photogs and models in the Dayton/Cincinnati/Cleveland area, I believe that I ready to step out and try somethings on my own. I will try to update this blog as I develop new ideas and finish new projects to chronicle my life as an amateur photographer...