Michael D Early Biography
I have been involved in photography for over 30 years starting with a basic "point and shoot" type camera. I found that what I enjoyed the most about photography was working in a darkroom turning out prints that met my vision of the image that I had photographed. From that very basic start I have progressed with more modern camera equipment as the industry has grown. Since retiring from the business world 7 years ago I now focus my efforts on nature and wildlife photography. I have tried to utilize the skills developed in spending over 40 years in the computer industry to fully embrace and capitalize on the new digital age of photography. I tremendously enjoy the whole new digital environment as the digital darkroom lets me re-experience all of the joys that I had creating prints at the start of this journey.
I spend a great amount of time traveling around the US for the sole purpose of finding locations that help me refine my photographic vision. These travels include numerous locations in my home state of Virginia, and along the east coast. I also enjoy the opportunity to capture egrets, cranes and other water birds at the many prime birding locations in Florida. I usually spend a few days each summer in the Bar Harbor Maine area photographing the area around Acadia National Park and on up the coast to photograph puffins and razorbills at Machias Seal Island. I enjoyed the time I spent at Bosque Del Apache NWR in the fall while the Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese are there by the thousands. In the spring of 2002, I had the wonderful opportunity to spend about 10 days in a boat off the coast of Katmai National Park photographing eagles and bears. 
At the start of 2003 I managed to work-in a three-week tour covering over 7,000 miles traveling to photograph eagles along the Mississippi; moose, elk and coyotes in Jackson Hole; eagles and other raptors at Klamath NWR; and, landscapes at Arches National Park. In addition to numerous trips to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2004 I managed to spend a couple of weeks during September at Yellowstone National Park and along the Oregon Coast in January. I spent the spring of 2005 working the birds along the coast of Texas and Louisiana; two weeks in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons in the fall of the year (during one of these weeks I gave a series of workshops on "Improving your digital skills" as part of one of Jess Lee's Yellowstone Photo Workshops); and then back to the Great Smoky Mountains for a week in late October. The Spring of 2006 I managed to work in a three week trip to Yellowstone (where I managed to drive over 3,600 miles within the boundaries of the park) and another trip to West Virginia. The late spring of 2007 found me back in Alaska spending a week driving around southwest Alaska and then a week at Lake Clark photographing bears.
I have been a very happy Canon camera equipment user for a number of years and am a member of Canon Professional Services. The photographs on this web site were taken with an EOS 3, EOS 1V, EOS D30, EOS 10D, EOS 1D, EOS 1D Mark II, EOS 1Ds, EOS 5D, or my new EOS 1Ds Mark III-- 
with a variety of lens ranging from 17-35 up to a 500 IS. For the past year, all of my work has been digital based, as the quality of the Canon 5D and the newer 1D Mark III have provided the image quality required for me to print 20"x 30" images. The Canon 1Ds Mk III with the "full frame" sensor (equivalent to a standard 35 mm film camera) is going to be one of my favorite landscape tools, but wow are those files ever big and do they ever have a big (no pun intended) impact on the workflow.
My primary digital darkroom tool is Adobe® Photoshop®
and I have been using it since Version 4 - along with a number of plug-ins to improve productivity and workflow. I capture the vast majority of images in raw format (about 99.99%) and up until recently most were processed using Adobe Camera Raw and a few with Capture One / Phase One as the raw conversion engines. The software provided by Canon - Digital Photo Professional - is quite good in terms of color rendition but I find their workflow approach very poor. In general, Capture One and ACR seem to be pretty equal but there are images that seem to work better on one than the other -- the only frustration I have is that I can't tell ahead of time which raw engine is going to be better for any given image. Over the past few years, I've had the wonderful opportunity to Beta-test both Adobe and Capture One offerings and really enjoyed the process of helping test and refine these key digital processing products. 
A few months ago I spent quite a bit of time working in Apple's Aperture and have found it quite an interesting product for processing raw images. However, ever since Lightroom™ started shipping the production version it has won me over. It has become my "tool of choice" for the vast majority of my raw processing work. I still find myself using Bridge for processing panoramas and HDR images so I find it quite advantageous that the two programs work so well together.
I am an active member the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).
I use an Apple MacBook Pro in the field and an Apple G5 for work in the office. For printing my images I use Epson 4000 with ImagePrint and an HP Z3100 for the really big prints (and am finding that I am using this more and more). I create all of my own prints and have successfully participated in a number of juried art shows. Along with a couple of close friends I have a small studio space in an art shop here in town selling our prints. In addition a number of my prints have been on display in Scottsville VA, Richmond VA, Chester, VA and Bar Harbor ME businesses.
In addition to the camera "vice", I also must admit to being a bit of a "gear head" as one of my grand-daughters calls me. I have always had a love affair with the combustion engine and have spent way too much money (and time) playing with those things that burn our old decomposed dinosaurs and run on rubber wheels. I have lost track of how many cars I have actually had since I started driving at 15 (it was legal in Louisiana at the time) but I am really happy with my current rides. As one of my friends says, my current main camera bag is now a new Lexus 570 and although it is a bit smaller than my old Suburban it sure is a nicer road car. It is just sort of a gear-head oriented vehicle, but luckily my other two "toys" more than make up for that.
The first one was acquired when I retired about 10 years ago from my 30 years at IBM and is a 1998 Camaro SS convertible. It represents some of Detroit's best knowledge at the time in terms of how to ring a lot of horsepower and torque from a V-8 with a reasonable amount of handling.
The second one was acquired last year and is a Porsche Cayman and represents Germany's best knowledge and how to pack a ton of power and handling into a very small and wonderful package. The two cars are totally different and I love them both. I guess my grand-daughter is right --I must be a true "gear head".