Hi, I am Gary Goodsell.


I started my photography journey in high school. My first camera was a twin-lens reflex 6 cm x 6 cm medium format camera...you could get them relatively inexpensively in the 1980's. I loved photographing every interesting thing I could see: the aftermath of ice storms in my hometown in Michigan, leaves in the fall, the different varieties and textures of tree bark, people, and sports. I loved taking pictures of my relatives and friends. I very much enjoyed taking pictures of the things around me and of people making things for life.


My father built for me a nice dark room in the basement of our house where I grew up. I loved it. I got lost in there for hours on end creating and manipulating black & white and color images and prints. I did some really good work. Dad made the dark room capable of enlarging images to 16”x20”, so I got jobs from the local library to copy, restore, and reproduce historical prints for them.


While I was an exchange student to Germany, I took hundreds of pictures--mostly slides. I loved traveling and exploring with my camera. It opened doors with friends to take pictures of them and the environs of northern Germany. This was a real growth opportunity for me in so many ways, and it very much benefited my photography.


At university, as part-time jobs, I was a dark room tech and a photographer for the university. I really enjoyed and thrived in both jobs. My regular studies in Management Information Systems were a little more challenging and more un-natural to me than photography. It never occurred to me, at that time, to choose photography as my main vocation.


I have had many career opportunities since university. I am a retired US Army officer, a retired fire fighter, a retired MIS director, and still a volunteer, part-time Free Methodist pastor . Constants for me have always been my relationships with God and the gift of being able to perceive images in the world around me. I have always come back to taking pictures of people and interesting things, despite setbacks in other adventures. In fact, photography has always been a backdrop for my experience and appreciation of life.


Psalm 18:1-3,

Gary E Goodsell


Gary Goodsell