ccomfort.com / Photography

I first became interested in photography and printing while taking Graphic Arts in High School. We learned how to develop Black&White negatives and print on Black&White Paper. For that year I spent a lot of time in the lab trying to perfect the process. Of course the year ended and my interest sort of faded away, for awhile.

It was not until I was working on my Master's of Science degree at Texas A&M University that I decided to pursue it as a hobby again. There was a photography store just across from campus near where we always met for lunch. One day I walked in and talked to the owner about Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras. At the time I had never worked with one, but professionals always seemed to be using them so they had to be better than the Point and Shoot cameras that I had always used. Since I was still a college student, struggling to survivie, I decided on the cheapest SLR camera in the store.

I ended up buying a fully manual SLR camera by Vivitar. I started taking pictures, immediately, but was reminded that it was not cheap to take photographs since you still had to pay for film and processing. In the end I found myself taking mostly Landscape photographs while visiting Gatlinburg, TN, Lake Tahoe, and other scenic places like that.

After finishing college and accepting a job in Birmingham, AL I decided that it was time to buy a more professional camera. I headed to Wolf Camera and purchased a Nikon N-70 (Nikon no longer makes the N-70; the N-80 is a close match).

Most of the pictures on this site were shot using the N-70 (which I still have today). The camera offers both fully manual, fully automatic, and settings that allow a combination of manual and automatic features. I would highly recommend a camera of this caliber to someone that was interested in learning more about non-digital photography.

I was introduced to the University of Alabama at Birmingham's photography classes after living in Birmingham for a couple of years. There were two different certificates available from UAB: Color or Black and White. Since I had spent some time in High School learning to print Black and White I decided that I would start working towards that certificate. The program at UAB was very good. I ended up taking classes on light and three classes on darkroom and advanced techniques. I also took a class on Hand Tinting. It was an awakening to me; I went out and bought all of the equipment for a Black and White Darkroom and set one up in my Apartment (converted one of the bedrooms in to a temporary one).

With the darkroom in place it was great to go out and shoot some pictures, then come home and develop them; not having to wait for the photo lab (and it was cheaper too). In one of the classes we even learned to take Infrared photographs. This was a very interesting medium since the scene was not visible at the time of the picture since most of the infrared light is not visible to a human eye.

As digital cameras started to hit the market I was slow to jump right in. The initial digitial cameras (that I could afford) were small point and shoot cameras that did little more than take candid shots. And when you tried to print these images there was no viable option that produced results near true film and paper processing. Another deficiency (which still slight exists today) is that digital photography struggles in producing crisp and clear black and white images.

I had come the enjoy Black and White images, especially for portrait shots and I was not willing to give that option up. Therefore, I remained with equipped with my Nikon N-70. Around this same time I was at a camera show in Birmingham and came across an old Yashica-A Medium Format camera. The camera was in decent shape and I took it home, bought film, and started shooting with it. The camera is totally manual, there is not even a light meter or battery inside. The winding and shutter are moved by mechanical means. I never expected that some of my favorite pictures would come from this old Twin Lens Reflex camera.

Finally, in 2004, I broke down and entered the Digitial SLR world when I purchased the Nikon D-70. This camera has proven to be amazingly versatile. The detail in the images is crisp and clear. With the new printing technology there is almost no way to tell the difference between a digital or film image after it is printed. The only negative to the D-70 (as with all digital cameras) is that there is still a slight deficiency on Black and White images. The contrast of these images from digital cameras (converted either in the camera or by software) is not as pleasing as from the actual Black and White film and paper by companies like Ilford.