For the years 1978 thru 1995 I was a commercial photographer in Orange County California. During that time I accumulated a diverse list of clientele that included: real estate developers, electronic part manufacturers, bakers, florist, geotechnical engineers, plastic molding companies, artists and art collectors and more. At various times the studio would be full of breads and pastries, floral displays, plastic trash cans, fireplace mantels, electronic gear or boxes of drill cores. I enjoyed shooting paintings and once photographed a Van Gogh with 8x10 film while the security guard stayed close by.

But at the same time I aspired to be an artist. I painted in my spare time and would spend long weekends lugging my 4x5 camera and tripod searching the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California for Ansel Adams landscapes.

I'm afraid I never lived up to Ansel's standards of photography, but I entered my photos in the Laguna Beach Festival of The Arts anyway. After being juried in, I displayed my best artistic photos every summer for several years. I soon discovered that I could sell flower photos better than any other subject and was thereby encouraged to do more and more flowers. (What's a poor boy to do?) Truth to tell: I have never stopped shooting flowers to this day.

Time flies; and I was reborn a digital photographer. Soon a desktop pc and a film scanner joined the list of photo equipment; followed shortly by a magical computer program called Photoshop. Soon many of my old film negatives were digitized and altered by the alchemy of Photoshop.

Fast forward; future tense: I will show digital prints at the Lee and Lee Gallery on Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, California February 21st thru March 19, 2016. I have decided to use one 25 foot wall of the gallery to show about 20 of those flower photos. If you are in the neighborhood please stop by.

Bruce Thacker's AutoGallery exhibit