How I started

Back in 2014, my wife Rachael started a conversation about our family vacation. She told me she didn't want to go to Walt Disney World again this year as we usually go every year. Rachael instead said, what if we go to the Sport-fishing Capitol of the World, Islamorada. I kind of gave her a hard time about it but I really was all for it. One of my stipulations was, I needed a GoPro if we were going to go to the Florida Keys.

I purchased my first GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition in May of 2015 and fooled with it all summer to figure out what I could and could't do with it and what the limitations of the camera were. I got a lot of great images in the process too. I did have an issue with the camera but the customer service at GoPro was fantastic and I had a new camera in no time.

So we flew to Ft. Lauderdale in November of 2014 and headed on down to the Keys. If you have never been there before you really need to go. It is a very relaxing place and there are a lot of great things to do there, or you can just do nothing at all.

I took an overwhelming amount of pictures there and I was surprised by the images I was able to get. 

In posting my pics on places like Facebook and Instagram I received a lot of comments and prompts to try to sell some of my work. So I did. 

I took my GoPro everywhere and got some really cool stuff. I learned to edit my images on the fly and compose my images on my own. 

I honestly believe that learning with the GoPro, which has no viewfinder or LCD screen, helped me with my composition. I have to "picture" the image as I want it without "viewing" it. 

I had a supporter and friend approach me to shoot a Celtic Festival for her in 2015 (Pipes in the Valley) as she really liked the images I was able to capture. So at that point I purchased my GoPro Hero 4 Silver Edition camera and went to work.

All of my images from 2014 and 2015 were taken with either the GoPro 3+ Black or the 4 Silver. I still use theses cameras frequently but I have now moved on to what I call a "real" camera. In December of 2015 I purchased a Nikon d5300 which is an entry level DSLR but a whole nother animal. I felt like I wasn't being taken too seriously because I was not using a "real" camera. I guess I succumbed to "peer pressure". 

So now I primarily use the Nikon but I do not forget one of the GoPro cameras either.