photonelly.com

About Kris

Aloha and thanks for stopping by.

I’ll start with the short version. I’m a web developer that likes taking pictures and going to Maui. I’ve grown up and still live in the Chicagoland area and have played hockey for just about my entire life. I have a beautiful and loving wife, no kids but two rabbits.

I’m in no way a professional photographer, and at least for now, just go by hobbiest. I think after a few more years and about 10,000 photos more, I’ll be comfortable using the term amateur. I do get lucky every know and again, and you can buy my best works if you like them.

 

About This Site

I’ve had my web development portfolio, webnelly.com, since 2001, but never really thought about having one for my photography. Then, after doing research for creating my photo store, I saw so many great photographer sites and so many great photos, I wanted one. So, that’s why I created photonelly and you’re reading the results.

The goal of this site is to collate and feature much of my photography work as a hobbyist over the past few years. Some of my work is already featured in a few of the different websites I have put together, yet other photo sessions don’t fit exactly into one of those sites. I also have photos on sites like Flickr and SmugMug that will also be showcased here.

Photography has only become a bigger hobby of mine in just the past few years. But in that short period of time, I have taken so many different pictures of so many different places, it is going to be the goal of this site to share as many of those experiences and as much of the stories and details behind these photos as possible.

 

Now, back to…

The Longer Version

I’m a techie, plain and simple. I’ve been around computers for more than half my life and have been doing some sort of programming since the 8th grade. That, and playing hockey since I was three years old had really been the two main passions in my life.

I have pictures from back then, from high school graduation and from college. They were nice and they captured special moments in my life, but they were just paper. I think it was our wedding day, no doubt the happiest day of my life, that really changed the way I looked at photographs.

It was almost 3 months between the day we took our vows to when we got our proofs from that memorable day. We had already looked through many of the photos that our friends and family took. However, when we saw the professional photos that now hang on our walls and make up our bridal album, it was like that day was here again.

We received our finished wedding album in January and we were getting ready for our honeymoon that May (there was nine months between wedding and honeymoon, that’s another story). We chose Hawaii as our honeymoon destination; Oahu and Kauai to be specific. We had bought a digital camera for Christmas and were just starting to learn how to use it. That first trip to Hawaii was the first time I starting taking photos on my own and seeing my memories on the computer screen and not in a photo album was just really cool to me.

 

Okay, almost done…

For the next year and a half, I was just taking pictures casually, here and there. Things like hockey tournaments, family birthday parties, the usual. It was in getting ready for the next Hawaii trip, our first to Maui, where I got bitten by the shutterbug bug.

In talking with a co-worker and fellow Maui tourist, she gave me a recommendation on a Digital SLR that her husband had purchased. After doing some initial research (like looking up what SLR meant), I took the plunge and dumped, er… invested about $2,000 into my first DSLR and an additional lens. I took 1,500 photos that trip, and not only did we fall in love with the island of Maui, I was smitten with taking photos, and began doing so with every opportunity I could.

I like to think my photography skills have come a long way in the short few years since that first trip to Maui. I have had my share of practice in many different situations and environments, and have had a very fun time doing it all. Almost makes me wish I had started sooner, but that’s okay because I don’t think I’ll be stopping any time soon.

 

Thanks again for stopping by the site and a big Mahalo for taking the time to read this page.

Kris Nelson