New Member: Rodolfo Hernandez
All photos © Rodolfo Hernandez

Photography has been my medium of choice for expressing many things for over thirty years. It has been the catalyst for education and self-discovery for most of my life. I suppose it still continues to be that for me. I feel that the excitement I had for photography as an amateur, still sparks the creative fire in my professional and personal image making today. What follows is a short history of my career from its infancy to the present using quotes or near quotes.

Come check out what I found in our attic! (High school buddy on finding darkroom chemicals and set of 3 multi colored trays and a plastic enlarger. This had all belonged to his older brother years before.)

You mean she'll even pay me to take photos of her (What a girlfriend at the time told me of an even more awesome looking friend of hers.)

I'm sorry to inform you that I can't accept your offer. This Friday will be my resignation date, because I'm going to be a photographer. (What I said after being given a promotion and asked to relocate to Scottsdale, Arizona.)

You can ****up prints but you CAN'T ****UP FILM !!! (Emphatic advice given by my very first former employer after developing one of his important jobs in stop bath instead of D76.)

Someday I hope to have two F1s with motor drives and a full arsenal of glass, all in a couple of Halliburton cases. (Comment made to photo pal during lunch only months before I would realize career in photography would be cool.)

Someday I hope to have two Hasselblads with at least four lenses, all in a Halliburton case. (What I told photo pal about a week later.)

Sweetheart, I just got my first comma job! (Code for anything over a thousand bucks.)

And what font size is the photo credit going to be for the cover shot? (I thought, not much else to negotiate after you realize how little covers pay for all the effort.)

How much RAM do I have to get now?! What's a terra byte? (Mantra since I jumped in at Photoshop 4.0)

Man, that was a great shoot! (What the AD and I said to each other at the same time!)

And the beat goes on...

Rodolfo Hernandez

Rodolfo Hernandez has maintained his own photography studios professionally since 1973. He currently is Photography Studio Manager and digital photographer for American Color Inc., Houston, Texas