: About Me

Reality strikes as I find myself torn between three passions, my horses, my photography and my aspire to write again as I did a quarter of a century ago.

Photography is so personal and a reflection of who we are and who we want to be and how we wish to be perceived by others.

Here I am 67 and counting looking around observing the fast changing art that is the field I choose to reflect my inner vision and how inside I so wish to be perceived.

A 10 year hiatus traveling around California in a pony drawn covered wagon and supporting myself taking Polaroid Pictures of children dressed in a cowpoke costume certainly wasn't the Matthew Brady clone I had envisioned I'd be.

Actually, I was in a time bubble when photography entered its digital age and during that time I thought a Polaroid Spectra with remote control was as good as it gets. I stored my Nikon's and my 4X5 view camera was stolen off the wagon. There's a whole bunch of fine photographers in our world both professional and amateur.

Anytime you think your a great photographer just because you call yourself a pro, there's an amateur lurking just around the corner with a 4X6 Walgreen's print of his shot of the eastern face of Mount Rainer at sunset to make you eat humble pie.

I subscribed to Peterson's, Modern and it's clone, Popular while the library along with intense conversations along Riverside International Raceway's Turn Six with fellow sports photographers served as my curriculum vitae in part.

Now I surf and there is so much information with thousands of photographers sharing their knowledge it dang near amounts to an overload. My favorites list is far too long and I even store the sites on delicious.

I will be more detailed and even perhaps more to the point as time goes on. I know about the fancy graphics programs and that holy grail of the digital photographer, Adobe CS3. I learned about smelly chemicals, 16X20 Drums, HC110, Rodinal (great developer for TriX)

I took in all the lore about Ansel Adams, and the Zone64 system as I recall was the term used. I still think it's silly.

But photographers are born geeks.

And, if they're like me and there's a lot like me, we're shooters.

The photographers I truly respect and, yes, admire, are the Brady's of our past and especially L.A Huffman who was a chronicler of the American Wild West when it was wild and of course Mr. Curtis who is a Northwest icon.

I have a inward grin reading about the difficulties in storing and transmitting digital images when my mind thinks of my predecessors transporting wet plates down the mountain spines on the backs of balky mules. Glass breaks you know that, of course.

Oh gosh, there I go getting lost in the world of pictures when I should; I mean it, I should say more about text.

I started as a cub reporter pounding the keys of a battered Olivetti typewriter whilst sitting across the aisle from a silver-haired, crusty tongued city editor. Joe had kindly allowed me to write obits and produce the weekly help column for the 64,000 circulation Ontario Daily Report
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"You can use a camera, of course?" John Jopes, the managing editor asked. I clenched my teeth tight and answered, "of course." "Ralph what do I do" and the paper's chief lensman smiled and said "F8 at 125 and use your strobe." I soon began laying out my own Sunday photo features and started drifting away from my stillborn career as a Ernie Pyle wannabe. Another paper, another town, I had traded in my medium format Mamiya with a Honeywell potato masher strobe for a 35mm Nikon.

Us unlettered illiterates, and at times unwashed, called our paper, The Ontario Daily "Distort." but softly and just when bending elbows over at Jake's Grill. I composed under daily deadlines listening to the clackity clack of the lino types in the background.

I was a general assignment reporter primarily covering the police beat as well as photo features for the Sunday paper and specialized in covering the minority communities in the Pomona Valley.

I went on to work for a Fontana paper which published six days a week. There I covered school, city and county government as well as police and prisons. I handled all darkroom duties as well as photography in which I compiled my own file of photos those with a queasy stomach would be well advised to ignore.

I was soon promoted to Sports Editor in addition to my other beats. I enlisted the aid of a local police officer who delivered box scores like the pros. I wrote and photographed high school football, basketball track and baseball. There were no such critter as a "soccer mom" back then.

I covered three cities and three counties and wrote stories about the big races at Ontario International Race Way as well as Riverside International and if space required did features like a photo spread on the 1st and only Nude Rodeo.

I briefly worked as managing editor of a small weekly in Colton, CA where aside from helping my one and only reporter choose what kind of pipe she should smoke, I edited a ad rag for Bull Head City, AZ, I
I published a monthly rock magazine with the help of young vigorous friends. My wife who used what then was the most advanced word processor, an IBM compositor, was my back shop and we quit when Guy, the most important one, left his job at the printing plant where he ran the press for us after hours.

I worked for The Bakersfield Californian where I covered eastern Kern County and wrote a column on country music but this was before Buck and Merle feuded their way out of "Nashville West."

After moving up North, I opened my very own portrait studio since no publication in Puget Sound expressed much timely interest in a penniless ink stained wretch from down south who foolishly ignored the "No Californians Wanted" signs sprinkled along northbound I5.

I own a fairly complete Nikon dslr system with an ultra wide zoom up to a 600mm Mirror Lens. Examples of my art can be found on my blog or on my website: http://ponyman.com

I own and operate a pony ride business.I can write humorless when proper but then life can be quirky at times.

I really value this computer age for what would we do without spell ck and control-alt-delete?

Oh, Yes, a vital footnote this, I'm Neil Holbrook.

My passion is ...

enjoying horses, people and bluegrass music and dogs

I know too much about ...

life's trivia

My parents always told me ...

never volunteer

My childhood ambition ...

space pilot

My favorite memory ...

close upfront involvement in the birth of my 4th son

Why I write ...

to inform others and hopefully provide a few chuckles along the way

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Bluegrass

My first job ...

orderly geriatrics ward in county hospital

My best moment ...

graduating USMC Boot Camp

My inspiration ...

That special smell all horses have

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