Back in ’95 I was still struggling to put myself through school while also working full time. As I was studying photography all I could really afford initially was a Pentax K-1000 which I got from either Sears or JC Penny, can’t remember which. The Pentax served me well for much of my photo course load, however, once I decided to get serious about using photography as a fine-art medium I knew that little Pentax wouldn’t cut it for what I had in mind … besides, it’s bracketing meter was already starting to become unreliable.

Still being on a very strict budget I’d had my eye on a used Minolta Maxxum 5000 that had been in the window

of the photography store downtown where I got most of my supplies. I was taking a slide photography class and wanted to do something pretty “out there” for my final project of the class. I remember discussing with my instructor what my intentions were and I remember she said, “I don’t think that can’t be done using slide film.” Well, being as head strong as I was that was really the push I needed to bite the bullet and go get that camera I’d been eyeing so I could get to work assembling the rest of the materials I needed to prove her wrong.

The images I created for my final project blew my teacher away so much she showed them to my instructor for the advanced photographic techniques class I was also taking and he asked me to give a demonstration for that class even though I was working on something else for my final project in that class using sepia-toned black and white photography. The results from my slide class ended up being the precursor to the images you see in my gallery. There were still some technical issues I needed to work out but I knew my trusty Minolta Maxxum 5000 wouldn’t let me down. I ended up using it for all the images up through my 2006 series of photos. It became my workhorse. Not bad for a second-hand camera that was already kinda old when I bought it.