Member Bios
Group Admin
Tom McCreary, APSA, MPSA
I am retired and enjoying my photo hobby. I have been taking photos since my college days, mostly slides at that time. I really fell in love with photography when I saw the magic of an image coming up in a B&W base hobby darkroom at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma in the 1960's. As soon as I could, I set up my own darkroom, and when I married Carol, we combined our darkrooms. Three young kids took too much time and money, and we both kind of got out of the darkroom and serious photography. After the kids were grown, and we got back into photography, it seems like digital photography was taking over, and we started scanning slides or negatives and printing them on an inkjet printer. We never set up a darkroom again, and when Carol passed away, I sold my Epson printer. Now just entering digital images for competitions, and getting photo books made for scrap books.
I am an active member of the Oklahoma Camera Club, and really enjoy the monthly competitions that we have both in prints and digital. However, since I have moved to Cape Girardeau, MO, I am still entering images but of course have not attended the meetings. I have switched from Nikon cropped sensor cameras to the Olympus 4/3 system. The much lighter weight of the telephoto lenses is the primary reason that I switched. I like the quality and ease of use of the Olympus cameras, and all of the features. I use Lightroom to view and Photoshop to edit my images. I think that taking slides helped me in my photography, because as you know, what you originally captured is what you had. Now, my digital capture at least usually gives me a good starting point to bring into Photoshop. I am having fun at trying new things in creative PDI.
Rich Sears
Photography has impacted my life in many ways. From the moment I took my first image with a Kodak Brownie camera of a moose at Yellowstone Park; to working with Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York during their hay days, to eventually opening a neighborhood photofinishing lab for advanced amateur and professional photographers in the early to late eighties, adding a portrait studio for seniors, publicity and family portraiture.
Then the experience of having to close our business as plummeting local retail photofinishing prices took a few of us down by the end of the eighties. I went back into my business career strength of finance, choosing I could not be involved in photography on a part-time basis, vowing to return when I neared retired. After a generation I purchased my first digital camera, a Nikon D5100, nine years ago, and with an insatiable desire to learn, poured through volumes of photography books, training seminars, and have traveled across the country to receive training at Yosemite, Oregon, Acadia, and greater Smoky Mountains. Since then I have sold that camera and now shoot with full frame, Nikon D810 and a cropped, D7000, cameras and continue my travel to national parks.
When I shoot I mainly focus upon capturing the many scenes and elements of nature, scapes and anything else that appeals to me. I am developing a leaning towards the subtle, artistic side of nature, while realizing I do enjoy capturing the majestic iconic scenes offered at our national parks, thou in soft light. And I do enjoy searching locally for the finer points of nature with a macro lens.
I head up a regional photography club, Ohio Valley Camera Club and participate in a few area photography clubs.
I live in the greater Cincinnati Ohio area with my loving and understanding wife and assisted with rearing our two twins. One lives locally, married with two kids, the other in Denver, married with twins. While visiting out west we surely will be checking off a few more national parks from our bucket lists.
Barbara Mallon
My parents met in a camera club and had me in the darkroom as a small child. I got serious about photography when I had small children and made a nice record of their early years. Today I shoot flowers and landscapes, grand children plus occasional portraits and events for friends. I like sharing my hobby and am in charge of the Livermore Valley Camera Club’s classes that we teach through LARPD as fundraisers. Also I have had a 4-H Photography project since 1980. I have done photography projects with Livermore Schools. I have judged camera clubs, a conference of camera. I am a member of PSA (Photographic Society of America) and also belong to their creative Flowers Slide Study Group. I started with black and white prints in medium format; then I took 35mm slides and began printing Cibachrome (Ilfochrome) in1995. Later, I bought a computer and Photoshop and am now printing most of my photos on an Epson 1270 printer from scanned slides.
Judith Flacke
I first fell in love with photography many, many years ago when I bought a secondhand Canon Canonette camera. I just loved the quality of the photos (when they came out right!) and the ease of use. When it died, the replacement SLR never really cut the mustard. Large, clunky and of fairly bland results. Bear in mind this was back in film days.
So photography lapsed and life happened and it stayed that way until a computer printer came with a small, free digital camera - early 2000’s. This soon became upgraded to a somewhat better Panasonic point and shoot plus Photoshop Elements 2 (what a challenge that was!) which, again, fairly soon became an Olympus OMD EM5. I immediately loved it and I have stayed with Olympus as my main camera pretty much ever since, now with Photoshop CC. I currently have an OMD EM5iii and an infra red adapted OMD EM1.
My main photographic love is Still life (melancholic, sad) and Nature/macro (the ‘hunt’ to find and photograph bugs etc is itself such fun!). But in many ways I remain a ‘happy snapper’ - jack of most photographic trades, master of none. Photography for me is a good excuse to be nosey and go to places/events where I would normally never go and record what I see. And to 'play' with Photoshop.
Almost retired now, in what would otherwise be my ‘spare time’ I head up my local Camera Club in Bideford, England. A good bunch of people, we meet most weeks for competitions, talks, walks or in-house evenings. All good fun.
Hoshedar Cooper
Born in India but resident in Dubai, United Arab Emirates since 1992. Have always been interested in photography but have decided to spend some more time on this hobby as I approach retirement. Joined a local photography group to learn more. It has been quite a journey from film cameras to digital cameras. My first camera was an Asahi Pentax film camera which I still own. I have not decided to specialise in any particular genre but want to take all sorts of pictures which will give me some satisfaction and for my family and friends to enjoy. Joined PSA and this group recently and look forward to learning and improving my skills. Good to be here.
Gaetan Manuel
I am Gaetan Manuel and I am from Mauritius, a small island in the south-west Indian Ocean. I retired end of March of this year. I worked at the Mauritius Meteorological Service as a Meteorological Technician for almost 43 years. I have two children and a grandson. One of my hobby since my retirement is photography but unfortunately, because of Covid-19, access to many sites is limited or prohibited.
It was about 18 years ago when I went to Singapore with my wife and had brought with me a Minolta AF Zoom 65 film camera, just to get some snapshots. Unfortunately, the camera started to have problems and I decided to buy a small digital camera. I opted for a small Vivitar 1.3MP as I was short of money. It soon proved inadequate and I changed first to a Canon Power Shot A95, then a Samsung point and shoot and finally to my first DSLR - a Nikon D60. Today, I own a Nikon D7200 and a D750 together with some lenses, among which the Nikon 28-300mm, Sigma 70-200mm and the Nikon 50mm f1.4 AF. When I bought my D60, I joined the 'Cercle des Artistes Photographes', a group of pro and amateur photographers in Mauritius. I am a member of the Cape Town Photographic Society. I like landscape and macro and would also be interested in doing some street photography and still life, but I am afraid to go out in the streets alone. Wild life? Well, in Mauritius, we do not have much wild life.
Butch Mazzuca
I hail from Chicago, Illinois, a graduate of the University of Dayton, and a former Naval Aviator (USMC). I spent my business career in Denver and after retiring I moved to Vail, Colorado in 1999 where I was a ski instructor for the Vail Ski School and wrote commentary for the Vail Daily Newspaper. I bought my first camera in 2008 for a trip to Africa, and my philosophy about photography can be summed up as follows: Impact, Visual Interest, and Storytelling are the fundamental characteristics that most often succeed in competitions and what I try to incorporate into my own photography and look for when reviewing images of others. I believe that light, composition, and technical proficiency are not stand-alone aspects in photography, rather they are the essentials necessary in creating impact and visual interest.
You can see my work on: Butch Mazzuca