I’ll give you the short version. Well, okay, the short-ish version…

I started taking pictures when I was 15. I got serious about it my senior year in high school and shortly after arriving at Penn State I scored a position on the yearbook staff. Those were some pretty heady days for me: shooting football with the yearbook’s Canon F1s and 300mm f/2.8 lenses, getting access to all the events at this giant university, and having a darkroom that was very nearly my own.

Alas, they were not to last. I dropped out after three semesters and had to leave all that behind. I went to work for a local photographer in State College doing darkroom work and party photography. It wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned. I guess I was thinking being a photog was more like being a rock star. Right around that time I also started to get into cycling in a big way. To make a long story short, I bought a bike, started racing, and ended up selling all my photo gear to pay rent. (I miss my old Nikon F the most)

Time passes…

In ‘99 I was at the beach with friends of mine. I picked up an SLR for the first time since I’d sold all my gear (nearly 15 years) and I loved it. It took me a bit longer, but I finally jumped back in with a Nikon N65. I started shooting again, but lightly, mostly because of the hassle of getting film developed.

More time passes…

A crappy point-and-shoot digital camera comes into my life. I am less than enthralled, all due to the shutter lag. I quickly learn that this is a problem with all point-and-shoot digitals and immediately begin pricing digital SLRs. Well, I waited until the D70 came out. My assessment at the time was (and still is) that this was the perfect price/performance trade off and a great way to shoot without the hassles of film development. I rationalized the purchase price by focusing on how much I was going to save on film and developing. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that I’d eventually be shopping a D2H…but I digress.

That’s pretty much how I got here. I decided to start seanbirdsell.com as a way to put my photos out there and get some feedback from the community at large. I mean, I’ve captured nearly 5,000 frames this year, at least that I wanted to keep, and I figured it didn’t make much sense to keep them locked up on my computer. On top of that, I felt it was time to have an online presence…and, well, I like to write.

So. There you have it…

–Sean