Daniel Gasteiger

Nature, food, flowers, animals, and occasional awe at the creations of humankind. These move me to compose.

I took up photography when I was in grade school. My dad introduced me and my brother to black & white film processing in a darkroom where he worked.

By darkroom, I mean “dark room.” My dad is a neurophysiologist, and a windowless room in his lab had a sink. This he used to hand-process film. I learned to pour chemicals into trays and, with the lights off, to get the film out of a canister, hold it by the ends, and see-saw my hands up and down to run the film through the various chemicals. It involved the one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand counting method, and groping from chemical tray to chemical tray. I’ll always love the smell of developer, stop bath, and fixer—though I’m not likely to experience it again in this lifetime.

The day before digital photography overtook film, my wife and I opened a photo processing store. My wife became a decent printer of color enlargements, and, as we closed down the store at a significant loss, she printed off a few dozen of my favorite shots that we swap in and out on our living room wall.

I reluctantly acquired my first digital camera—an astonishing 2.1 megapixel marvel. Then, as a marketing manager for a high-tech company, I shot and digitally edited photos to produce collateral for the company’s products and services. I started creating greeting cards about seven years ago, but never considered having professionals print them for sale.

When I became a blogger and garden-writer, I naturally put my camera to work and have published hundreds of photos on dozens of websites. Since shooting most of the photographs for my book, Yes, You Can! And Freeze and Dry It, Too from Cool Springs Press, my photos have appeared in newspapers all over the United States.

I try not to shoot snapshots, but when that's what comes out of the camera, I make peace with them. I hope I haven't included any of those here. I appreciate photo-editing software, but strive to use it only for cropping and resizing images (unless I need a special effect for a brochure or a website). Very occasionally, I remove small blemishes from my shots, but I prefer to look for camera angles and lighting to provide interesting effects when I click the shutter button.

Please visit my blog(s) where you'll find some of my photos at work: Your Small Kitchen Garden and Your Home Kitchen Garden.

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