I’m a native of Missouri, having been born and raised in the St. Louis area. I moved to the mid-Missouri area in the late 1970s to pursue an undergraduate degree in fisheries and wildlife management. I was a research biologist in an aquatic toxicology laboratory for several years. I was then admitted to law school at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Since 1985, my day job has been practicing law with a firm in mid-Missouri.
My primary hobbies for many years have included hunting, fishing, hiking, biking and playing a guitar which I have pursued with varying degrees of enthusiasm depending on the leisure time that has been available to me. I have had the opportunity to travel over the years in connection with my work, but most often for pleasure. In 2003, I took up photography as an avocation when it occurred to me that I had spent much of my life witnessing some wonderful sights and I had no record other than my progressively defective memory. I decided to study some basic photographic techniques and then set about recording places and experiences.
Here is a brief summary of the equipment I’ve used over the years. My first camera was a 35mm Pentax Super Program SLR with an excellent 50mm lense that I purchased in 1990 primarily for taking family snapshots. Much more recently, I purchased a used Pentax Program Plus body as a back-up and a number of additional lenses. Sticking with that brand, I transitioned in the 2006 timeframe to a digital Pentax *ist (which has since given up the ghost) and, later, to a Pentax K10D which I still use on a regular basis. Along the way I picked up an inexpensive, used Canon digital SLR that I use primarily as an easy-carry travel camera.
For initializing this website, I’ve broken the images into several broad categories. Over time, I may for convenience and manageability break these down into sub-categories into particular topics. With few exceptions, the images you see here are digital capture and most of them have been adjusted to a greater or lesser degree to more faithfully represent the subject matter or to achieve a special effect. There are many other raw images that I have stockpiled based on my early work with film cameras, but I have not yet undertaken scanning the negatives to achieve a high level of resolution.
Just as becoming a lawyer taught me to think about the world in a different way, photography has taught me to view the world in a different way. I hope that you will enjoy browsing my body of work.
Thanks!
Paul Boudreau