As the walls of their apartment closed in on Joanna and Sidney, with Joanna working from home and Sidney wondering the streets in search of photographic opportunities, they decided the time was ripe for a trip to visit Jo’s brother and sister-in-law in Whitefish, Montana. They weren’t going to fly. They didn’t want to stay in hotels or motels. And using campground facilities was not appealing. Taking a cue from Alan Goldstein they decided to rent an RV and as Horace Greeley said “Go West”.
With the concept the planning began and quickly more than a visit and stay in Whitefish was hatched. Jo and Sidney laid out a six-week odyssey west with plans to visit National Parks along the way. The plan took them through 13 states including stops at National Parks in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah.
Join Sidney on November 24th as he explains the planning process, the good and not-so-good aspects of “RV’ing it” along with a show of images made along the way.
Sidney has been photographing seriously since about the age of 9 starting as many did with a Kodak Brownie. Although he recalls taking some pictures with his father’s Kodak Bantam camera that used 828 film. Sidney still has that camera. His love of darkroom work was triggered as he watched his father develop prints in a make shift kitchen darkroom. He thought it was magic to see an image appear on white paper placed in a tray of chemicals. This love of the darkroom led to countless hours spent in darkrooms at his high school, college, apartment with the window covered, a kitchen, a converted bathroom, and basement darkrooms.
One of Sidney’s particular photography loves is shooting sports. In high school and college is was an official school sports photographer shooting football, baseball, swimming, golf, basketball (nothing better than sitting on the hardwood under the basket!). When his son Dan became his high school’s football manager Sidney spent Saturday afternoons walking the sidelines and end zones snapping action shots. After shooting about 20 rolls of Ektachrome each game, getting it processed and scanned he went digital choosing Canon over Nikon. He still has his original Minolta SR-1 and has been recently shooting with it.
Today Sidney enjoys all types of photography genres – macro, flowers, water, action, street, portrait and more. If a picture can be made he likes to shoot it.
