Paid work in the field came a bit later. While he took creative writing and
journalism classes in college, he did not practice these skills outside of the
classroom. In fact, higher education interrupted his longstanding hobby of
photography.
While he was visiting his sister in Arizona, a friend received a call with
an offer for a job he was no longer interested in at a newspaper. D.C.
responded instead and got the job—which he essentially learned by doing.
Hired as a darkroom technician, he gradually took on more photography and
writing work as he demonstrated that he could do it well.
He loved that job, but found it very intense and stressful. After about two
years, he was burned out and ready for something new. He moved into video
production, studio photography, and advertising work.
Later, he moved back to Ann Arbor, where he has family, and found a job the
next day doing photo processing—as a temp at first and full-time after a
few months. This, however, was a truly miserable job, and he soon started
looking for something better. The Ann Arbor News newspaper and Campus Photo
Services at the University of Michigan happened to call on the same day. He
decided to work at U-M because of the benefits it offered and has been there
for more than 20 years.
This variety is one of the things he likes best about his job: even the
routine types of assignments involve different events, subject matter, and
people, so that the job is really different every day.
How he got to his present job
D.C.'s career as a photographer began with a Brownie camera and a trip to
Greenfield Village as a fourth-grader. His photos were so good that he knew
he had a photographer's eye.What his work is like now
Once again, he started in the darkroom and worked his way up to more varied
and interesting work as a photographer. He covers university events of all
kinds, takes some tabletop product photos, and does a lot of portraiture. Over
the years, he has done sports coverage, commercials and other ads, and even
photo-illustrated an elementary mathematics text.How he expects his field to change in the future
Digital photography will allow one to photograph a situation, event, etc., to
download the photo file from the camera to a computer, to create the
composition with photo-editing software, and to print the final product at
one's desktop—all without ever using conventional film!