Bio
My experience in photography began with the gift of a small snapshot camera - a plastic Kodak point and shoot that used 110 size film, sometime in the late 70s. I had a knack for taking pictures that didn't involve cut off heads or feet, that managed to be in focus, and even, occasionally, told some sort of story. How my parents kept up with my film and processing "habit", I'll never know.
My grandfather, Vincent Re, was an accomplished photographer in the Cincinnati, OH, area. My fascination with photography grew tenfold through watching him work on his pictures in his basement darkroom. The things you could do with a simple negative amazed me. What really hooked me was taking pictures of fireworks shot from the rooftops of downtown buildings during Cincinnati's 150th birthday celebration with my dad, Michael Re, and then seeing the results from a trip through my grandfather's darkroom. Following that, I won the WEBN fireworks picture contest in 1989 (with more than a little help in the darkroom from Grandpa Re - actually, he won the contest, I just happened to drive the camera!).
I went without a camera for a long time, until 2000, when I bought a modest Canon film camera kit, and started the long road of really learning the mechanics of photography. Since then, I've progressed to better and more efficient equipment, and shot quite a few different subjects under some interesting and peculiar conditions. What you see here on this website is a result of that work.
I continue to learn every time I have the camera in my hands - and there's much left to learn, and so many things I'd like to capture. In time, hopefully I will.
Dave Re, June 2006
Equipment
Almost all of what you see in a photograph is really the spirit of the photographer, and not his equipment - it's the Indian, not the arrow, as they say. Still, I've had some folks inquire about my gear, so I'll list it here for those who are interested. My current rig includes a Canon 10D w/ BG-ED2 battery grip, Canon 70-200/2.8L zoom (seemingly my primary lens), Canon 17-40/4L wide angle zoom, Canon 50/1.4, Canon 1.4x teleconverter, a Canon 420EX flash, an Epson P2000 PSD, and various compact flash cards. This modest array of gear allows me to take photos in a pretty wide range of conditions, and still get some beautiful work.
About the DRP website
This website underwent a complete rewrite during the May-June 2006 timeframe. The original site was based on HTML tables, used images extensively to make up the left navigation bar, and a rather heavy handed and incomplete attempt at using CSS to style the pages. That's all changed, now. The entire site is completely rendered in XHTML and CSS, with a little help from PHP on the backend to help make things a little bit more manageable (for instance, the leftnav is generated by a PHP script).
The site is designed and maintained using Adobe Photoshop for image manipulation, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX for XHTML and PHP file editing, project management, and site syncrhonization, and gVim for CSS file editing. It is currently checked for compatibility using the latest Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera browsers, as well as being verified by the W3C XHTML and CSS verification programs. The new online gallery and horse show proofs are implemented using the fabulous PhotoCart package that is sold by picturespro.com.