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 Steve Denton’s passion for photography began in the mid 1980’s in England, when as a teenager he was lent a Pentax Spotmatic SP1000 and a couple of lenses by a relative. After much anticipation and several days wait for his first film to be developed, excitement was replaced with the disappointment of getting back a roll of out of focus, incorrectly exposed pictures, many of which also exhibited camera shake. And let’s not talk about composition. This led him to borrow a book on photography from the same relative, so he could attempt to figure out why his pictures weren’t nearly as good as those from his Kodak Disc Camera. From then on he was hooked.
A few months later, Steve jumped on the opportunity to purchase a gently used Nikon F Photomic (that was a mere year younger than him), complete in a big shiny metal case, with four lenses and a flash gun for £250. He then returned the borrowed Pentax, but possibly still has the book somewhere on his bookshelf, and definitely still has the shiny metal case.
Armed with his new Nikon, Steve rapidly became one of the main photographers for his school yearbook, and placed in the top three in his first photography competition with a picture of meerkats.
At age 18, he dropped out of school with the intention of becoming a professional photographer, but being at the start of a cold, dark, damp English winter, he accidentally fell into a career in I.T., a situation that took him several years to remedy. During this time Photography remained a serious hobby, rapidly adding a second Nikon F Photomic and a Nikon FG (complete with auto-winder) and numerous lenses to his kit. Finally he went to University and became a sports and event photographer for the university newspaper – the Warwick Boar, which strategically had located its dark room in the Students Union, mere feet from the nearest bar.
After selling some lenses and giving the FG to his brother, in 1993 Steve emigrated to the U.S. Initially moving to Atlanta, GA to escape the cold and damp, with a single suitcase containing just clothes and his CD collection, and with his cameras as hand luggage. In 1996 he relocated to Austin, Texas, and finally broke down and added new bodies to his kit, while still shunning modern inconveniences like autofocus – a Nikon F3HP and Nikonos V (which led to a close call with an eel with lots of teeth, but that’s another story).
In early 2006, Steve finally admitted that the main camera manufacturers might finally be getting close with gimmicks like autofocus, and some of these new digital sensors looked somewhat interesting, so maybe it was time for a switch. The four bodies, along with numerous lenses and flashguns were put on eBay, and after briefly looking at Canon, Steve finally settled on a Nikon D200 (mainly because he preferred the ergonomics over the Canons) with an 18-200mm lens, and a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 to scan in his slides. Numerous other lenses quickly followed this, the most used being the 12-24mm f4 and 200-400mm f4, and the Nikon D300 was ordered when that came out. Most of the slides are still waiting to be scanned.
This site has been established to showcase some of Steve’s Photography over the years (assuming he gets round to scanning in his slides), and help share technical information, techniques and opinion with anyone that has the time and inclination to read.
Steve can be contacted via Steve@DentonImages.com
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