Orest Macina says he is “a self-taught photographer interested in painting with light to capture the beauty all around us in vivid colors.” He holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Computational Chemistry, and has worked in the pharmaceutical field. He first became interested in photography in high school, though his interest lagged through college, graduate school, career, and marriage.
Portrait photographers are responsible for a lot of happiness among a wide variety of people, because well-done family pictures grow more valuable yearly. They usually portray infants, seniors, friends, and relatives, though sometimes portraits are interpretations of unusual subjects. Thomas Balsamo knows this because he has 30 years of experience photographing families and children. His work has also led him to a personal project that originated when his good will and curiosity were extended toward individuals or groups who found their portrait sittings emotionally and psychologically unusual, as well as uplifting.
When Yiming Hu was a freshman in college he rented a camera and fell in love with photography. After he moved from China to the United States he was drawn to landscape and travel photography and learned advanced photo techniques from books, magazines, the Internet, and lots of experience. Today he works as a computer engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati doing research, and as a second career he shoots landscapes and travel subjects in many locations to satisfy his photo appetite. I spoke with him recently about his work.