Kent Morris

I have been fascinated by photography my whole life.  My father was an avid photographer, and I loved his photos taken during his many trips around the world in the 1950s and 1960s.  In 1970 my father gave me his old Topcon 35mm SLR and a handheld light meter.   That was the beginning of my journey in photography.  Soon, I bought a Minolta SRT-101 and a few lenses.  As photography was expensive, I loaded my own film canisters from bulk (mostly Tri-X Pan, ASA 400), and I developed and printed my photos.  Though my photos from the early 1970s were far from stellar, my father had taught me the fundamentals of taking meaningful photos and the basics of processing them.   

While in the U.S. Navy in the 1970s, I always traveled with my camera, whether I was on an aircraft carrier or climbing the pyramids in Egypt.  I was shooting mostly Kodacolor or Ektacolor.  In retrospect, I should have been shooting Kodachrome.

After the Navy, I went to work in Dubai, which, in 1980 was a backwater in the Middle East, nothing like the glitzy city it is today. This is when I shifted to slide film, Kodachrome and Ektachrome  I then moved to Saudi Arabia, where my photography blossomed.  Photography was a challenge in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and could land one in trouble.  I only had one roll of film confiscated.  I left the Middle East in 1985, I wandered around China for many months carrying two lead film bags, one for unexposed film and the other for exposed film.  This was a great time, as China had not opened up to tourism.

By 1990, both of my SLRs were shot, so I used a point-and-shoot 35mm camera when serving with the U.S. Army during Desert Storm and later while working for an NGO in Sarajevo, Bosnia during the siege of the city.  Some good photos that suffered from a sub-par camera.

The digital age dawned on me when I returned to the Middle East as a U.S. diplomat in 2003.  Until I retired from the State Department in 2020, I enjoyed so many wonderful photographic opportunities, from the beaches of Normandy to the sands of the Sahara desert to captivating cities in Uzbekistan.  During this time I took roughly 70,000 photos, of which there are a few “keepers.”

After retiring and moving back to Rockville, I have been trying to improve my skills.  In addition to joining the SSCC,  I have taken photography courses at Montgomery College and, most recently, I went on a photography workshop to Antarctica. 

Since the turn of the century, I have been using Canon DSLRs.  For processing, I use Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, DxO Photolab and Nik plug-ins, as well as Topaz Photo AI and Gigapixel.

Some of my photos can be seen at: www.morrisx2.com