Photographer: James Hager (Karma=6285)
near Denver, CO USA 
About: I am a freelance nature and travel photographer living near Denver, CO, USA. I joined to share my work, and through your comments improve it. You can see more of my work at www.jameshagerphoto.com.
I grew up near Philadelphia, PA, being exposed to photography (No pun intended.) because both my father and paternal grandfather were avid amateur photographers. I started shooting in elementary school with a Kodak Brownie that had been my mother's when she was young. I moved up to a 35mm point-and-shoot in middle school, and bought my first 35mm SLR in high school, a Minolta X-570.
After high school, I followed the respectable course of going to college and grad school to become an aerospace engineer. I landed a job with McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach, CA, and had fun developing and using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes. After seven years of interesting work, I had the urge to move on and find something more fulfilling to do with my life.
In 2001, I took a year-long leave-of-absence and traveled around the world in order to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. Before departing, I bought a Minolta Maxxum-7 system. I discovered that traveling and photography were a whole lot of fun, so I quit my job and sold my house to become unemployed and homeless, and continued traveling. (I don't know why the unemployed and homeless are considered disadvantaged ? I was having a ball!) I also switched to a Canon system based on the EOS-1V. In 2003, I tried a stint at seminary to explore what I thought was a call to ministry, and discovered that I sorely missed travel and photography. That was the final input to let me know that travel and nature photography is what I was designed to do.
I began the switch to digital capture in September 2004 with a Canon EOS-1D Mark II (primarily for wildlife action), and completed the switch in December 2004 with a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II (primarily for landscapes).
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