Welcome.
I’m Mike Stephenson and my very first foray into photography was when I was about twelve and the year was 1969 when the Moon Landing occurred. While I had used a Kodak Instamatic earlier than that, it was around 1969 when I somehow purchased a 35-mm Minolta range finder. I always worked as a paper boy, or shoveling driveways after snowstorms or cutting grass in the spring and summer. I also got around that time an enlarger and fashioned together a darkroom in my parents’ basement. It was imperfect but I learned a lot about the chemistry of photography, and I found it magical to watch an image show up on a piece of photopaper. In some ways, I miss those days.
I ended up going into college and majored in Chemistry and later I studied Chemical Engineering and earned an M.S. and discovered I really liked the field of engineering.
It would be some years before I really got back into photography in earnest. In college, I held the post of Historian for my fraternity and documented parties and events. But schooling was my major focus and it wasn’t until I got into the work force that I really got serious.
I got a Pentax ME-Super SLR as a Christmas present and I studied photography. I took classes at the local community college and started buying lenses and another enlarger and setup a darkroom in an apartment using a spare bedroom. I also got into studying Ansel Adams and discovered the Zone System.
I had taken a course as undergrad in backpacking to help fulfill a P.E. requirement and discovered it was a ton of fun. It was simply a weekend backpacking trip in the Adirondacks, and I learned quite a bit. Years later, around 1983 or so, my neighbor, who is still a good friend to this day, had gone on a solo backpacking trip in Yosemite! I decided I had to do that too. So in 1985, after a relationship failed, I decided to go to Yosemite. I was ready for something new and different.