About Kirk Decker

Hi there, I'm Kirk Decker.  I live just outside of Kansas City, Missouri, USA.  I think I was 10 years old when my aunt let me look through her 35mm SLR camera, a Minolta SRT 101. It was coolest thing I'd ever seen with all sorts of complicated knobs and buttons. When you looked through the veiwfinder, it was just like the camera scenes in a James Bond movie.

I started taking photography classes through the local 4H club.  I was lucky in that not only did my instructor have a darkroom. She allowed my to use it whenever I wanted.

Photography and I got along well.  It seemed easy for me to understand, and I did well in the 4H competitions.  At some point I had a Mamiya MSX 500, but, I kept saving my money until I could buy my instructor's used Nikon F for $300.

I did yearbook in Jr. High and shot my first wedding while I was in 8th grade for $50.

At some point, I begin to lose interest in the camera as a fun gadget, and to gain interest in the images the camera produced.  Actually, not that images that the camera produced, but the images a person, using a camera could produce.

In the time since I've started taking photographs, everything has changed. But the image remains.  And that is what I'm interested in.