zackiedawg
WEDway Peoplemover Rider
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2008
- Messages
- 3,882
I'm an insurance manager and financial advisor for a branch office of a large financial services company. I've been here for just short of 15 years, since moving to Florida from California in 1994, where I was working as a finance manager for a car dealership. I handle estate planning & wealth preservation for the firm, which involves selling and servicing annuities, life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance, 401(k), pension plans, corporate benefits, 529 college savings plans, etc. for our financial clients. Happily, I don't do any 'sales' - the people who buy these products are already our firm clients with investment accounts and other assets held here, who already have a need. I spent many years through high school and college doing cold-calling and other sales jobs to pay my way, and I really didn't want the high stress and reliance on commissions for the rest of my life.
I have had cameras since 1974 when my father bought me a Kodak Instamatic in New York City when I was 5 years old...and moved to my first SLR in 1978 at 10 years old (a Pentax ME Super which I still have!). But I honestly wasn't 'into' photography nor did I pursue learning the craft for the first 20 years. I was mostly just using the cameras as tools to take vacation photos and family photos, and though my Pentax was a manual focus camera, it had a meter in the viewfinder and I just turned the aperture ring until the meter was in the middle, and used 'P' mode to let the shutter speed be chosen automatically. I had no idea what shutter speed and aperture relationships were. I got a Canon EOS-IX in 1995 or so, which I also used in mostly automatic mode...this was my last film camera. In 1997, I decided to jump on the new technology and bought the Sony FD91 Mavica digital camera, which was a marvel to me. It had 1 whole megapixel, and an astounding ability to see your shot on the LCD screen as you were getting ready to take it - and what's more, you could use the spot meter to point at various darker and lighter points in the shot, and see the camera adjust aperture and shutter, visibly lightening and darkening on screen! I was blown away, and instantly fell in love with photography. I shot thousands of shots to floppy disk, mostly using spot meter and P mode, but finally understanding a bit more the relationship between aperture and the metering of the shot. Only after 5 years in 2002 when I upgraded to the brilliant Sony F717 did I realize that my years of 1MP digital photos were good for nothing but a 3x5 print! The 717 is where my photography love really bloomed - at 5MP, and with excellent F2.0 Zeiss glass, it was my first 'real' digital camera. With it, I learned how apertures, shutters, ISOs, and white balances actually worked, and for the first time learned to use A, S, and M mode to take control of the settings. I had finally become an amateur photography enthusiast.
I'm still an amateur with no designs on becoming a professional photographer, however I've been thrilled and honored over the past 3-4 years to have sold some prints out of my office to visitors who insisted on purchasing some shots I had displayed on my walls. I also was hired for a few minor shoots, for charity events such as golf tournaments, and a college baseball induction...all of which went to local newspapers or magazines - it was great to have photos published locally, even if the coverage was more about the event and less about the photographer! This past summer, I received a request from a national kid's magazine to purchase several photos for their June issue, which was a Cloud Nine thrill. I do not market my photography so I don't consider myself a professional, but it has been quite an honor to have somebody else offer to pay for a photograph you took. My photography is for me to enjoy, and to share with others in hopes they might get some entertainment or enjoyment out of it too - I hope to always have the opportunity and the time to enjoy photography and will always share it with family, friends, and online friends too whenever possible...and if opportunities occasionally knock, and allow me to get some pocket money from it...more's the better!
I have had cameras since 1974 when my father bought me a Kodak Instamatic in New York City when I was 5 years old...and moved to my first SLR in 1978 at 10 years old (a Pentax ME Super which I still have!). But I honestly wasn't 'into' photography nor did I pursue learning the craft for the first 20 years. I was mostly just using the cameras as tools to take vacation photos and family photos, and though my Pentax was a manual focus camera, it had a meter in the viewfinder and I just turned the aperture ring until the meter was in the middle, and used 'P' mode to let the shutter speed be chosen automatically. I had no idea what shutter speed and aperture relationships were. I got a Canon EOS-IX in 1995 or so, which I also used in mostly automatic mode...this was my last film camera. In 1997, I decided to jump on the new technology and bought the Sony FD91 Mavica digital camera, which was a marvel to me. It had 1 whole megapixel, and an astounding ability to see your shot on the LCD screen as you were getting ready to take it - and what's more, you could use the spot meter to point at various darker and lighter points in the shot, and see the camera adjust aperture and shutter, visibly lightening and darkening on screen! I was blown away, and instantly fell in love with photography. I shot thousands of shots to floppy disk, mostly using spot meter and P mode, but finally understanding a bit more the relationship between aperture and the metering of the shot. Only after 5 years in 2002 when I upgraded to the brilliant Sony F717 did I realize that my years of 1MP digital photos were good for nothing but a 3x5 print! The 717 is where my photography love really bloomed - at 5MP, and with excellent F2.0 Zeiss glass, it was my first 'real' digital camera. With it, I learned how apertures, shutters, ISOs, and white balances actually worked, and for the first time learned to use A, S, and M mode to take control of the settings. I had finally become an amateur photography enthusiast.
I'm still an amateur with no designs on becoming a professional photographer, however I've been thrilled and honored over the past 3-4 years to have sold some prints out of my office to visitors who insisted on purchasing some shots I had displayed on my walls. I also was hired for a few minor shoots, for charity events such as golf tournaments, and a college baseball induction...all of which went to local newspapers or magazines - it was great to have photos published locally, even if the coverage was more about the event and less about the photographer! This past summer, I received a request from a national kid's magazine to purchase several photos for their June issue, which was a Cloud Nine thrill. I do not market my photography so I don't consider myself a professional, but it has been quite an honor to have somebody else offer to pay for a photograph you took. My photography is for me to enjoy, and to share with others in hopes they might get some entertainment or enjoyment out of it too - I hope to always have the opportunity and the time to enjoy photography and will always share it with family, friends, and online friends too whenever possible...and if opportunities occasionally knock, and allow me to get some pocket money from it...more's the better!
And of course all of that money is theirs.
Then moved on to Novell with those idiotic diskless 386 workstations that Groucho previously mentioned 
