I’m a native Chicagoan and a born photographer, and I have never wanted to be anything else. Funny thing is I’ve been a pro since the age of 13 when I was commissioned by various friends’ parents to shoot portraits of their families. I had my first legitimate show at 17 and sold my first photographs to an ad agency at 18: race car photos for use in Pure Oil national ads shot through Leo Burnett. I started Bart Harris Photography, Inc. at 23 and shot retail fashion for Both Marshall Field & Co. and Carson Pirie Scott & Co. as well as several small ad agencies. My early ad agency photography revolved around humor and an opportunity to shoot Virginia Slims old-time photos early in my career really helped propel me into the limelight.

I always had a great desire to see images as they were created. In the early 70′s, as its quality improved, I began using 4×5 color Polaroid as final film, something no one else had yet done. That led directly to beta testing and lecturing for Polaroid Corporation’s new 8×10 print material. This only served to further whet my appetite for what was to follow years later as the use of computers and digital photography began to develop.

To put my early interest in Polaroid use in context, when I began shooting professionally, there was no professional Polaroid (instant) material available for photographers to “proof read” their photos. At that time the only way to preview photographs was to either shoot a test hours beforehand or “hot soup” black and white film and make quick prints from still wet negatives, while models took a paid coffee break.

Additionally, in those times a photographer had to understand both physics and chemistry. One had to understand bellows factor, gamma ratios, color filtration, how to read and interpret exposure meters and more. For most photographers, these skills were developed over decades, certainly a much longer period of time than today’s auto-exposure/auto-focus, zoom-lensed cameras require.

In 1990, with the introduction of Adobe® Photoshop 1, I found what I had been searching for in photography for years, “Instant Gratification.” It was love at first mouse click. I dismanteled two darkrooms in 1993 and began making prints on two (state of the art at that time) digital printers. The first was a dye sublimation printer I purchased for $15,000 to make proofs for clients, the second was a friend’s Fujix printer which made larger prints, also direct from digital files, something relatively new and extremely expensive.

I stumbled upon digital photography in late 1994 when I tested a Kodak DCS460 digital camera that many “experts” incorrectly said was inferior to 35mm film. I discovered it was quite the opposite… but more about that in Technology.