Hello and welcome to my site, my name is Alta Denton I am a self-taught photographer. Still learning… Ten years ago I moved to a place where I only knew about six people and they were all members of my family, all but one lived two hours away. About the third or fourth roll of developed pictures I picked up, I noticed a lack of people in them, and I suddenly realized that scenery was not a serious waste of film. The reason my sisters thought that is because they weren’t as good at capturing it as I am. Yay, another breakthrough, I never thought I would say that I think I am better at anything than my sisters. Seriously… I am related to some amazing women. Okay I did go a little sideways there. Needless to say my interest in taking beautiful pictures was developing as I kept trying to capture the feeling of the splendor.

I was imprisoned by a roll of 36 until early winter 2003, when for my uh er birthday, my sister, who had informed our sister and brother, just what it would take to put a 5 mega-pixel, ten optical zoom digital camera in my hands, bought a Kodak Easy-share. They also bought a 1GB memory card, which by itself, cost a hundred dollar bill at the time. Oh my Lord, the freedom of that 1000-photo plus memory card and the two sets of re-chargeable batteries was like……nothing I can put into words. I went from using around 75 rolls of film a year to a time or two shooting all that in just one day. It was almost intoxicating.

I became submersed in the camera, taking pictures all the time… of anything. My cat and my roommate talked of moving out together if I didn’t stop using them as models. I could not get enough. So I became fascinated with two inanimate objects. I honed my skills on the Patterson Memorial Bridge and a giant rock off Cape Sebastian, Mack Arch Rock. Another way in which I considered a good idea to teach myself more, was to offer my time and camera to the young ladies whom I like to refer to as ‘the library kids.’ I took prom dress pictures, senior portraits and friends and more friends pictures. They took me to places that they had to help me get out of. Even though I felt like I captured some awesome shots of all of them, I could see that my skills were still low. But they received discs of pictures of themselves and if ten percent of them were usable then they have a considerable amount of pictures of their young wonderful selves and their friends. They were all very photogenic; I can say proudly that one of them used one for her yearbook senior portrait. I also was honored to be asked to take wedding pictures. I should have said I would be available for the casual pictures, or had someone wrangle people for family line shots. I couldn’t do that but I wished I could. It was a beautiful wedding and such an uplifting day, my hope for the world right now is that all weddings can send their guests away feeling the way I did, like there was nothing more meant to be in the world. Best of everything you two….

And then my friend furthered her mother’s legacy of helping people see a way to their dreams by backing me on my vision camera. Within a year I was able to purchase a telephoto lens and I was up-up and a-way, shooting, anything that I could get in focus (or not).

Spring of 2011 I felt like I had come around some corner or up some hill; I saw shots coming up that to my critical way of thinking were great improvements. So I offer you my photos, please comment, positive or negative, I can take the negative as long as it is constructive, and not mean. Oh, and please please comment on my ‘JUST FOR FUN.. WHAT IS IT?’ Gallery. That almost sounded like nagging …. input looking for input. Aw heck, just enjoy!