I know this page is about me, but let’s start with you. What’s in it for you?

• My pho­tos are avail­able for use under Cre­ative Com­mons with proper attri­bu­tion and a link back to this site.
• Reviews of pho­tog­ra­phy prod­ucts I’ve used
• Arti­cles with advice, tips and expe­ri­ence I’ve gath­ered from shoot­ing thou­sands of photos
• Dis­count codes on pho­tog­ra­phy and blog­ging software
• A great com­mu­nity of folks shar­ing the same pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy and technology

Not only that, but you have my sin­cere thanks. There are mil­lions of blogs on the Inter­net. I’m glad you took some time to read mine.

Con­tact

You’re always wel­come to leave a com­ment on a post, or reach me directly by using the Con­tact form on the main menu.

Social Embassies

I’m not just here. I’m also there.

Pho­tog­ra­phy Reviews

Please visit my Reviews page. I’m always adding new pho­tog­ra­phy reviews to this area. You can find reviews on cam­era gear, soft­ware and educational/​training resources for your pho­tog­ra­phy. I show plenty of pho­tos with my lens reviews to give you an idea of how they affect a scene.

My Gear

My Gear page shows you the equip­ment I use — every­thing from cam­eras & lenses to light­ing and GPS. Again, there are more pho­tos to show sam­ples from the dif­fer­ent pieces of gear.

My Arti­cles

Look­ing for a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on pho­tog­ra­phy? Check out my Arti­cles page for a few tuto­ri­als and per­spec­tive you may not find elsewhere.

A Strange Path to Photography

Hi, I’m William Beem and I am a pho­tog­ra­pher. That doesn’t mean peo­ple hire me to take pho­tos, though. It’s just an admis­sion of an addic­tion that I’ve had since High School when I used to walk around with an Olym­pus OM-​10 35mm film cam­era. In fact, I thought I was going to build my career in pho­tog­ra­phy. Two major schools were on my radar — Brooks Insti­tute in Cal­i­for­nia or (more real­is­ti­cally) Day­tona Beach Com­mu­nity Col­lege. DBCC (now Day­tona State Col­lege) has an out­stand­ing pho­tog­ra­phy pro­gram, it was close to home and much less expen­sive. Then some­thing hap­pened that totally derailed my plans.

A Career in IT

I got my hands on an Apple ][ com­puter and a new pas­sion was born. These things were fas­ci­nat­ing! Every­thing about own­ing a per­sonal com­puter was a new expe­ri­ence and peo­ple had such great excite­ment about the pos­si­bil­i­ties. I wrote soft­ware. I cre­ated my own cir­cuit boards. My pho­tog­ra­phy fell behind as I devel­oped this new pas­sion into a career work­ing for big name companies.

• Gen­eral Mills
• Sun­Trust Banks
• Lucent Tech­nolo­gies
• Le Cor­don Bleu
• Lock­heed Martin

I also spent some time in my career as a free­lancer, writ­ing mag­a­zine arti­cles, edi­to­r­ial columns and con­tribut­ing to book on tech­nol­ogy. I con­sulted for other busi­nesses. The great part was that I expe­ri­enced a num­ber of dif­fer­ent indus­tries through their tech­ni­cal needs. The bad part was that the pas­sion in the tech­ni­cal indus­try waned. There are still peo­ple who love it, but the man­age­ment seemed to switch from peo­ple with pas­sion to busi­ness­men who sim­ply looked at tech­nol­ogy with no more inter­est than plumb­ing. Tech­nol­ogy became a nec­es­sary com­mod­ity and cre­ativ­ity didn’t fac­tor into the plan. In short, they took the fun out of the field.

Pho­tog­ra­phy to the Rescue

My field of choice changed from a pas­sion to just another job. I went back to pho­tog­ra­phy as a cre­ative out­let and it was the best deci­sion I ever made. My orig­i­nal pas­sion remained, but I found a diverse com­mu­nity of other peo­ple who have just as much inter­est in cre­at­ing pho­tos. Also, the tech­nol­ogy of pho­tog­ra­phy now takes advan­tage of things that I learned in my IT career. Instead of sniff­ing chem­i­cals in a dark room, I’m pro­cess­ing pho­tos on my com­puter lis­ten­ing to Ste­vie Ray Vaughan (at the moment). There are plenty of peo­ple who can show me new tech­niques and appre­ci­ate what I have to share.

Favorite Quotes

I’m here to help — Me

No good deed ever goes unpun­ished - Clare Boothe Luce

I’m worth a mil­lion in prizes — Iggy Pop

Hob­bies

There’s more to life than any one thing — even photography.

• Motor­cy­cling — My father used to race and I grew up around them. I’ve owned many bikes of many types, but just have two Harley’s now.
• Travel — Who doesn’t like travel as a hobby? This one fits nicely with photography.
• Video Games — I’m not a hard­core gamer; more of an occa­sional enthu­si­ast with my XBox 360.
• Music — I’m an awful gui­tar player, but that doesn’t stop me from tor­tur­ing my dogs. The real musi­cian in my fam­ily is my brother.