DON DAVIDSON
PHOTOGRAPHY
Donald Patrick Davidson
4510 Lost Creek Lane
Bellingham, WA 98229
(909) 936-8201
WRITING AND PHOTOGRAPHY
EDUCATION
B.A., Photographic Illustration, Brooks Institute of Photography, Santa Barbara, Calif.
B.A., Sociology and English, University of Redlands, Redlands, Calif.
MY JOURNEY WITH PHOTOGRAPHY
I first became interested in photography in the 1970s through the work of photojournalists Greg Schneider and Jebb Harris in The Sun newspaper in San Bernardino, Calif. They won numerous awards for their work and their black-and-white images always conveyed a unique and often-emotional perspective on an event or scene. I reached out to them and they generously allowed me to spend an evening in the darkroom where they shared their thoughts about their craft.
My first camera, purchased around 1972, was a Mamiya Sekor 1000 DTL 35mm film camera. I spent a ton of money on film and print and slide processing and I began to think my future was in photojournalism. I was a decent writer, having fallen in love with journalism in junior high school and high school, where I served as editor of the newspapers. I began to dream of bylines in National Geographic or Life magazines: "Story and photos by Don Davidson." I spent a lot of time at Redlands Camera and the laundry room in our home became a darkroom.
A few years later I was accepted into the program at Brooks Institute of Photography, where I would pursue a bachelor of arts in photojournalism. They had an instructor, Phil Cohen, who was legendary and I was thrilled to be able to study with him. I began the program in 1977 and while I was taking the beginning series of courses, Cohen announced his retirement and the program was reduced to one course. I was crushed, but like Senator Elizabeth Warren, I persisted. As a student, I worked as night shift supervisor in the photo lab at Multi-List McGraw Hill, which was on the forefront of digital publishing. While we still processed film and made prints, we scanned them to create digital halftones for the press. The scanner was as big as a small car.
In August 1980 I graduated with my degree in photographic illustration, but my heart was still in photojournalism and I got a part-time gig as an editor for the regional lifestyle magazine Élan, where I contributed a monthly story with photos. It was a great experience, but the magazine folded after a year. I also shot weddings on the weekends, which helped to pay the bills, but I hated it. Typically, the mother of the bride would want me to make sure the ex-husband's girlfriend wasn't in any of the photos. Ugh!
In 1987, I quit my job as operations manager for a wholesale distributor of Chevron products (which I also hated), bought a Macintosh Plus and PageMaker version 1.0 and published a monthly tabloid called Echelon: Southern California Bicycle Racing News. Being smitten by bike racing, it was a perfect fit: I wrote nearly all of the copy, shot all of the photos and laid out all of the pages. Unfortunately, I also solicited all of the advertising (not my cup of tea) and after a year it was paying for itself but not putting food on the table and I was forced to shut it down.
Soon afterward, I was fortunate to land a job as sales and marketing manager for Color Images Systems, a professional photo lab in Riverside, Calif., and I loved it: great people, outstanding (mostly) customers and a full-time job in photography. From there, I moved on to the marketing communications department at Health Data Sciences Company, a software development firm, where I wrote and shot photos for a variety of publications and learned to integrate hyperbole into my daily life.
The World Wide Web was emerging in the early '90s as a marketing tool and I went on to serve as assistant director of new media at The Claremont Graduate School, where I reengineered and managed its website. I was eventually promoted to director of publications, then director of marketing. From there, I served as director of marketing and communications and public relations for Mount St. Mary's College (Los Angeles), Harvey Mudd College College (Claremont), and the Bourns College of Engineering and the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, where I retired in January 2017.
In all of my career positions, I always had a camera nearby and shot photos for a variety of purposes. My second camera, which I took to Brooks Institute in 1977, was a Canon F-1, followed by a succession of Nikons. Last month, after visiting their booth at the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival, I went back to Canon and purchased their new EOS 5D Mark IV, which is fantastic. Over the years, I've come to realize I was never really interested in shooting photos of what other people wanted and I now have the time to shoot what I see as interesting or beautiful. This website will be a place to share what I have seen. I hope you like it and I invite you to visit regularly.
Visually,
