Hello, my name is SULAE Walker.  Strange name?  Na, not really.  My grandfather had the name and my father does as well.  It only makes sense that I have it to.  Where did it come from?  Who knows?  I am still doing the research.

Anyway, you clicked on this link to learn about me as a photographer / artist and not the "personal" me.  If you want to know more about the "me" stuff, drop me a line.  Other than that, let's move on.

Dad gave me my first camera back in the 70's.  It was a 35mm range finder camera.  My buddies were impressed when I told them that it was a “German-made” camera.  For some reason we all thought that foreign-made stuff was better; I don’t know why.  I don’t remember the name or the model of the little camera, I didn't even care to take photos with it.  The only thing I remember was how good it felt at holidays when dad would give me a couple of rolls of film and handed the responsibility of capturing the memories of the event over to me.

A few years later, I started photographing with another aspiring photographer.  My new buddy’s brother was a portrait photographer (he was, no me) and had a small darkroom outfit.  Now don’t go saying that was the only reason I hung around him was because his brother had a darkroom.  Yes, the darkroom and full access to his brother’s chemicals (when he wasn’t home) was definitely a "plus" in my book, but not the (only) reason for our friendship.  It was just an added bonus. 

On Saturdays, we would walk to the city swimming pool with our cameras in hopes of getting a photo of a pretty girl (How and why did we concoct this plan?  Hey, we were boys, you figure it out).  The plan was to take as many photographs as possible with out being kicked out of the pool area and get the photographs back to the darkroom to enlarge the negatives 15 to 20 different ways.  We had to shoot in black and white, which was kind of nice.  It added an extra artistic expression to our barely (no pun intended) permissible magnum opus-es.

Yep, all the way to the pool which was nearly 3 miles from our door to the water, we would walk.  It seemed like a hundred miles and most of the time we got bored with the trek.  Sometime we would walk on different sides of the road looking at whatever we passed by.

I don’t remember when it happened or why it happened, but what I do remember is stopping near a small bluish flower and clicking a picture.  "Man?  What are you doing?" my buddy asked.  With a deer-in-the-headlights look, I could only muster a, "what?" 

"Dude, a flower?  What's that all about?"  At first he seemed a bit perplexed, but after a second to take in his puzzlement, I realized that he was not criticizing me for taking the photograph of the flower, he was questioning his entire paradigm of photography.  After all, the best photos we had ever seen were those in the magazines under his big brother's bed.  Why would anyone take a photograph of a flower?  None-the-less, I had taken a photograph of something other than a girl and that shutter click changed my life forever. 

Photographing things along the way made the time go by better and added a bit more excitement.  On one subsequent hike, I looked back and found my friend trying to close in on a squirrel that was chattering down from a huge magnolia tree.  He started finding the world around him; he started to "see."  Granted, it took a year or so before a flower found its way into his viewfinder, but he found his way, oh yea, he got good (not as good as myself mind you, but good).

We took pictures of flowers, squirrels, birds, people ridding bicycles, people fishing, bridges and whatever else crossed our paths.  We would spend our roll or two along the way finding hundreds of things to photograph.  Eventually, we found ourselves without a roll of film or even a single frame for the girls we set off to photograph in the first place.  After becoming bored with the same path each Saturday, we started walking other places to take pictures.  Eventually we both got bicycles and rode to places to photograph.  This, in turn, was followed by me getting my driver’s license and driving places to photograph and photographing all along the way.  I would pull over at every interesting landscape, skyscape, cow, river, sunset and country church.  If I could drive to it, I would photograph it.  I had become a photographer.

Today, nothing has changed except now go with my wife or the occasional aspiring photographer who wants to "see" what I "see."  Long ago I lost contact with my first photo-buddy.  Now it is usually me alone looking and hunting for that perfect frame - that perfect photograph that will express my individuality - express my distinctiveness.

My camera maker is Nikon.  I do shoot with other camera types such as Holga and antique box cameras.  For the most part, I have entered the 21st century and find digital the media of choice for today's photographer.  I may never leave film all together, but then again, you never know.

Show the world your world; share a photograph,

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