I'm not a visual person. I don't think in terms of images or pattern or color. If anything, I think in terms of words and musical sound. My eyesight has never been very good. I can't draw or paint. So why did I take up photography as a hobby?

Well, it started as a way to record a trip to Australia and New Zealand in 1997. As photographs, those pictures were medeocre snapshots. You won't find those here. A fixed-focus, point-and-shoot camera is an easy instrument to play and a hard instrument to play well. (I warned you that I think in musical terms!)

For a trip to Hawaii in 1999, I decided I needed better equipment, so I went out and bought a "real" camera -- a 35mm SLR made by Canon called the "Rebel G". Unfortunately, I bought the camera only a month or so before the trip and didn't really learn much about how to operate it beyond using the pre-programmed modes offered. So I got what I'd consider adaquite snapshots. You won't find those pictures here either.

I decided I needed to learn how to run the camera better before my next Hawaii trip. So I signed up for a photography class. And discovered I didn't really need to learn how to use the camera so much as I needed to learn how to use my eyes!

Several trips to Hawaii, a few thousand frames of film and four or five sessions of the photography class later, I think I now can take an occasional actual photograph, as well as lots of pretty good snapshots. I hope you agree. Here are a few humble offerings.

These are my pictures of Hawaii -- or as they say in Hawaiian, "Ka`u mau ki`i o Hawai`i keia."

This page copyright © 2003 by David Wallace.