Putting together an internet photo
album takes a lot of work, but it
also brings great satisfaction.

Hello and welcome to my photo website. My name is Steve Minkler and I began building this internet photo album in August of 2007. I am having a lot of fun putting it all together, and I plan to continue adding to it (hopefully) for many years to come. I do apologize for the somewhat slow loading times of certain pages on this site, but that is because the pages are very graphic intensive.

This is me with my 27 year old Canon AE-1P camera in hand.

Photography has been a favorite pastime and passion of mine since 1983. However, it has remained a hobby and is not my main profession (that would be drawing custom house plans in Southern California). If you are interested in custom home design, please feel free to visit my other website at www.Minkler-House-Plans.com to see what I do.

I grew up in Escondido, California (in north San Diego County). I am a big San Diego Padre baseball fan and enjoy many different types of music. I have been married to my wonderful wife Karen for 17 years. She grew up in Eugene, Oregon and loves the scenic beauty of the Northwest. She is also the inspiration for this website. We currently live in San Jacinto, California and love to travel whenever possible. And we are both Christians who love the Lord Jesus Christ and believe that He is the only way to the Father - and ultimately to Heaven.

The island of Kauai, Hawaii is our favorite vacation spot. There are many pictures of Hawaii featured throughout this internet photo album.

Creating an internet photo album is made a little bit easier if all of your pictures are already in digital form. Mine were not since over 90% of my images were originally shot on film. So I knew that I needed to scan lots of slides and negatives into digital files. I invested in a dedicated film scanner (a Nikon Coolscan V-ED) in 2006 and began the long and laborious process of digitizing my images. While enjoyable at times, the scanning process is also very time-consuming. After several months (to save some time), I had a number of photographs and slides scanned commercially at a local photo store close to my home.

To this day, I still do all of my serious shooting with a 35mm film camera. It is a Canon AE-1P which I purchased back in 1983 and it still operates perfectly. I have also (on occasion) used a Minolta X-370 camera, and lately have been taking lots of casual photos with a Kodak digital compact. However, most of the photographs you see on this site were taken with the Canon SLR. I subscribe to Popular Photography magazine and also to Shutterbug, and enjoy reading their camera and lens reviews each month. I do hope to purchase a digital SLR someday. My leading candidate right now is the Canon XSi. However, I am also checking out the Nikon D90.

Another favorite pastime of mine is going to a Padre game.

This internet photo album begins with pictures and information about San Diego, since I have more photos of that particular city and area than anywhere else. Karen and I would both like to go back to Hawaii again (our favorite vacation spot) and collect more photos of that beautiful place. And we both have family members living in Oregon, so I hope to add more photos of the Northwest from time to time.

Building this internet photo album allows me to share my "photographs and memories" (anyone remember that Jim Croce song?) of some favorite travel destinations. Some of the images on this website are also featured on some stock photo sites. You can see more than 100 of my stock images (and instantly purchase and download them if you like) at Dreamstime.com . They are listed under my stock identity "Pj1960".

I have also recently partnered with a professional lab where you can purchase prints (in many different sizes) of some photographs on this site. Please visit my Photo Store page for more information about buying prints. If there are specific photographs you would like to see offered for sale, please let me know. Click on the "Contact Me" button at left.


How This Internet Photo Album Got Started.

Online photo galleries are a great way for lesser known photographers and amateur hobbyists (such as myself) to become known and showcase their talents. However, you need to build a website that generates traffic or else no one will find you (that is the unfortunate case with 99% of the websites on the internet). My wife and I discovered a unique and rare web-building company in late 2006 called Site Build It (also known as SBI). Using SBI's tools and design templates, I created a website for my home design business. The success of that site led me to start a second one featuring my photography. SBI sites are unique in their ability to generate lots of free traffic from the search engines (like Google or Yahoo). For more information about Site Build It, please click on the "Build A Website" page button along the left side.

Thank you very much for visiting my photo gallery! I hope you enjoy it.

To return to the home page, click here.