Lewis Smith

I was a licensed, practicing Civil Engineer for 35 years and am now retired and a grandfather of 8.

Life for me started in an Army Air Corps field hospital in Seymour, IN. We then moved to another airfield in GA and then to my grandparents house in Anderson, IN when my father was posted overseas. Later we moved to Marion, OH where I finished school and went to The Ohio State University for my degree. I also got a masters at Colorado State University on a fellowship.

I married and the first decade or so we lived in 5 states, and had 3 children. We finally settled in Springfield, VA; I worked in Washington, DC; we became coach / leader / supporter of kid activities; our kids grew-up and graduated from college; my wife and I retired; and we became care-givers for 3 of our parents and for our young grandkids (the oldest is in college now).

A few years ago, life began to slow down a bit which allowed me to spend more time on my hobbies. After my family, my real passion since childhood has always been travel and photography. We travel much more now and I spend considerable time on processing digital images photographed on outings and trips.

My creative influences come from three sources - family crafts, family photo...

I am mostly self-taught with some schooling.

My undergraduate studies covered how to take and how to use aerial photography for mapping which I used for many years at work.

Over the decades I also took many classes on photography for the lab work, for Photoshop and for creative uses.

After decades of taking photos of my family and my vacations, real understanding of image composition and camera settings came from digital cameras and the endless redos without cost and with real time images.

The other part of the learning was the advent of digital photo editing - Photoshop. Several Photoshop courses gave me background and very good references. But setting down 3 years ago using Photoshop with my digital photos exploded my understanding and aptitude in applying Photoshop to achieve images I wanted.

Since 2014, my photo images have been juried by the Art League in Alexandria, VA; Washington ArtWorks in Rockville, MD; Del Ray Artisans in Alexandria, VA; Maryland Federation of Art in Annapolis, MD; and the Art League of Hilton Head in Hilton Head, SC.

I have sold my juried prints and won an award for my work.