About Beamer
Hi, my name is Clyde Beamer.
This is site is primarily a photoblog that I started in early 2007. Recently I have added the pages you see in the sidebar headed by the page titled Professional Stuff. These pages replace a earlier website I had setup to display my professional portfolio. I have worked for over 25 years as a designer, editor and animator in television/film graphic design. Take a look if you have time.
My interest in photography goes back to my years at James Madison University, in Harrisonburg, VA where I minored in photography. I helped support myself during the last 2 years of college by selling pictures of drag racers’ cars that I would take at the track one week and deliver the prints the next week. This little venture was “Clyde’s Speed Photography.” I also owned 25% of a drag car at the same time, birthing my love of all things loud and fast to this day!!
I still have the Minolta SR-T 101 that I shot with back then. With the 55mm f-1.7 MC Rokkor lens it is all the hardware that survives from those days. I continued to shoot casually for a few years after college, but eventually laid it down completely for a long time. In 2001 I got an Olympus C-3030 and began to re-introduce myself to photography through the digital revolution. The next year I traded that in for a C-4040 and bought the WCON-07 wide angle lens and a cheap tripod and began to shoot some landscapes. In 2005 I bought a Nikon D70s and never looked back. I have 4 lenses: the Nikon 18-70 kit lens, a Nikon 70-300 VR, a Nikon 60 micro and a Tokina 18-24. Recently I bought the Nikon SB-800 AF flash and am still trying to figure out how to use it.
I still feel most comfortable shooting landscapes and nature, but I am trying to branch out more. I think my involvement with vazaar.com, weeklyshot.org, and more recently onexposure.net, have helped me immensely to learn and broaden my skills. I am really grateful to Brandon, Jacob and Ralf for putting in a lot of time and energy on these sites!!
I call myself a “Certified, Card-carrying Virginia Hillbilly”.
Born and breed in western Virginia, I spent the first 22 years of my life virtually within sight of the West Virginia border. That’s an important point, ’cause no self-respecting Virginian would ever associate with anything or anybody from West Virginia. Some Southern States loyality thing I guess. Look at the choices Robert E. Lee made in the name of state’s rights and loyality…
