My name is Tom Wahl, and I have a lifelong love of photography. My early interest was centered around my love for military aviation modeling. As a teenager, borrowing my Dad’s Canon 35mm (I think it was an FT) to visit the National Air & Space Museum was a fantastic Saturday adventure, and those trips to capture details taught me some of the mechanical fundamentals.

When I was stationed at Langley Air Force Base, I got talked into applying for my first credit card to purchase a Minolta 35mm kit with a couple of cheap zoom lenses, and I spent the next three decades or so exploring composition, subject matter, and a little bit on lighting. Along the way I went through about 3 generations of equipment, and I learned a lot!

One of the most important things I learned is to start with capturing imagery that you love. This is really sort of recent. When editing and finding things in my photos, I started to notice that there were some common things about that my favorite pictures. My favorite “people shots” are candid and either the subject is alone in a place that is usually crowded, or a single person or maybe a couple are somehow isolated. I love doing night photos, and I love playing with HDR – but I really love them combined! I love capturing things that are normally overlooked – “Showing you the things that you missed.” And I still love flying (and other) machines. Developing the different skill sets to do these things well kinda leaves out wedding photography and baby pictures, unless I want to hate photography.

Which I don’t, so where does that put me today?

I have been sporadically playing around with video for a few years for specific purposes. My Canon DSLR equipment is also well suited for video, and I bought a Canon video camera about two years ago. Add some appropriate sound equipment, and I might be able to tell some stories…