Out of Sight Images

I started photographing images in the early 80's while attending Huron High School. My younger brother picked up a camera first and I followed. We had a small set up in our basement to develop black and white photos. I offered my services to the girls basketball team, making scrapbooks for the seniors. I had no idea that that year would be the year they would go to state and win. That was a lot of picture taking. 

I then left for Oxford, Ohio, to earn my B.S. in Mass Communication. BS are the operative letters. I graduated with no real idea of what I was going to do. After six months of heavy sighs and fruitless resume rejections, I took an internship in Idaho at a TV station. It was the first time shooting news and I loved it. I found my special purpose. Three months flew by and as my internship came to an end I was offered a position on staff. Being an East coast boy, I declined the offer and returned to Ohio. I was hired part time at a station in Dayton editing news...but I was a photographer. After six months I was offered a full time photographer's gig in Charleston, South Carolina. I was in heaven. I didn't know a soul. I was really working. I mean really working and making money. Not much money...but enough to pay my rent. In hind sight I wasn't, what I call, a success. I actually qualified for food stamps that first year.

Hurricane Hugo came and went and before I knew it...I was chief. Me? Where the hell did that come from? I always considered myself a "worker bee". Now I was boss. Maybe not "the boss", because there were plenty of layers of people above me, but I was the boss of the photogs. Seven whole years I spent in Charleston and then I moved back to Ohio to work at WKRC. Not WKRP...but close. Five years later I left news to found I & Eye Productions and enter the corporate/commercial world of video production. Seven years later, that ran it's course and I decided having business partners was kind of like fish...nice for a while, but then they begin to stink. I sold my interest and founded a new solo venture called Visual Justice. Working for myself gave me the time to play with still photography again, and go figure, I really loved coming back to it. I love displaying my creative side through photographs. Little did I know that others would appreciate it too. Like anything you do purely for fun, you don't think about how others may perceive it. After several people asked for prints of some of my work I decided maybe I should showcase some of my captures in a venue that more than just my facebook friends would see. 

Jump to Mid December 2011. Here we are. I've done it. This sight will launch next week and I'm anxious to see what people think. Lucky people get to do what they love, but truly lucky people can share their passion with others....and make a living while doing it. I feel lucky.

Kraig Haplea