About Me as a Software Developer

I am a software professional with over twenty years of experience, primarily in systems and application development, ranging from small systems programming on IBM mid range systems, to application and object-oriented programming with Smalltalk, to embedded and mobile development with Java, to more recently web technologies, both for the desktop and for mobile devices. You can get more information about me professionally on my cv page.

About Me as a Photographer/Visual Artist

I'm a 40-something software developer with a suppressed need to create. I currently live in the US Southwest (Arizona), but I grew up and lived in the US Midwest before that (Wisconsin and Minnesota).

As a young teen, I had an interest in cameras and photography. I remember playing with old brownie cameras (not actually using them). My first camera was a Kodak instamatic 110. I moved on to a Yashica rangefinder 35 mm camera, and then a Canon AE-1 SLR. As I grew up and had kids, I kept up with my cameras, upgrading to a Canon EOS SLR, but mostly for taking family and kid shots.

I never really found much true passion with film photography - I didn't enjoy the lack of control that resulted from relying on labs for prints, and although I wanted to, I never really found much of a groove in my own darkroom print developing (I have done it and enjoyed it a lot, but never found a long-term darkroom solution).

For a while, my interest in photography lay dormant. Then, as is the case with a lot of others, I found a renewed interest in digital photography. I purchased a small point-and-shoot digital Canon Powershot camera with the intent of taking family snapshots, but then discovered I now had the control I didn't have with print and slide film. With Photoshop, I could have complete end-to-end control of the image making process, which was more comfortable to me because of my background in computers and software.

However, I wasn't satisfied with the limitations of a point-and-shoot camera, given my history with 35 mm rangefinder and SLR cameras. So I upgraded very modestly to a used Canon D30 digital SLR. I still use this camera today. It is a dinosaur in the digital camera world, but it is managing to serve me OK.

I haven't had much fame and fortune with photography, but I did have the honor of having one of my photographs appear on a magazine cover.  My image of Koi fish was selected to be on the inaugural cover of MaVista Magazine, produced in the UK. I had several photographs selected for inclusion in the first issue of the magazine, and had several selected for a theme set in the second issue.

My love for photography and visual expression has spread into other areas of creativity. I began producing simple worship visuals for our church, and that has gradually expanded to more complex visual creations, including motion video. I also maintain and design our church's web site, which ties in with my love of visual expression.

My Philosophy

My creative philosophy can be summed up by a quote from Garry Winogrand: "I photograph to see what things look like photographed."

I enjoy the entire process of observation.

Often I enjoy walking around and observing even without putting the camera to my eye or taking a picture. I like to see if I can make something out of nothing - finding the "essence" of a subject, by finding form, line, color, or shape.

In that way, I think a lot of my work is more along the lines of "studies" or "etudes" than full blown symphonies. I like to hope that little doses of the small and insignificant can make up a more meaningful whole.

I also like the words of Beaumont Newhall: "We are not interested in the unusual, but in the usual seen unusually."

About the Web Site Name

For those of you curious about the name AzDrew: It goes back quite a way. I was trying to create a user name for one of my first online user accounts (I think it may have been AOL). I could not come up with a unique name for "Andrew" besides something like "AndrewS159834".

We had just recently moved to Arizona, and my wife , whose name is Penny, was in the process of getting a custom Arizona license plate. She tried "One Cent" (like a penny) but that was taken. so she ended up taking "AZ Cent".

So I tried "AzDrew" as a user name, and that worked.

AzDrew is a fairly unique name for many online user accounts, so the strategy (and the name) has stuck.