This site is dedicated to digital photography and imaging and finally gives me the chance to use a Master's degree in magazine publishing I earned at Northwestern University about 40 years ago. Then, it was almost impossible to conceive that you'd actually become the publisher of a print magazine. Those guys (and most were men, at that time) sat in corner offices overlooking Madison Avenue in New York, and rode around in chauffeured limousines. They had beautifully coifed and clothed secretaries with drop-dead good looks (and brains) who could wither you by merely raising an eyebrow.

But having called myself a photographer from age 12 when I was given a plastic Donald Duck camera that took now-extinct 127 film, I had decided to get that degree because I thought it might be useful (and it was) to know the thought processes of those who would hire me as a photographer, and what they wanted (and needed) to produce successful magazine spreads from my pictures.

During my undergraduate years at Brooklyn College, I worked as a free-lance photographer for practically every newspaper in New York. Then, after graduate school, I became a contract photographer for Globe Photos Agency and subsequently worked for Time-Life and many other publications as a magazine photographer. If there was some place on earth that intrigued me, I'd find a way to get there.

You could make flights-for-photos deals with airlines easily then, and I was a frequent flyer long before the term was ever coined. I remember flying all over the (then) Territory of Alaska, my ticket just a slip of paper on which was scribbled: "Art can fly free anywhere he wants with us. Treat him right." It was signed with the first name of the president of the airline. Those were the days!

Well, it's been a long way from those days to these, and a lot has happened in between. I've worked throughout the world as a photojournalist, filmmaker, writer, musician, university professor, TV news director, and Coast Guard officer, and have won my share of awards and honors. Now I live in what has humorously been called "The Third World Banana Republic of Miami" with my wife, Carol, and 20 cats she's rescued.

I'm Feature Editor of Digital Camera Magazine, write for other publications, and help kids at inner-city schools make the transition to the digital world. But most of all, I'm a passionate lover of photography, both as a documentary medium and a fine art, and have several photographic projects planned that will be shot with inexpensive digital cameras.

Photography is photography, and digitizing the image doesn't change the basic creative process. Like an artist working in different mediums such as water colors, oils, and others, you still have to know the basics of light, texture, color, focus, depth of field, and all the other elements that must work together to produce a meaningful picture.

What digital imaging has done, is take away a certain drudgery that most of us (but not all) used to dread -- long hours in the darkroom, for example, doing many repetitive tasks that were downright boring. It has freed up the creative possibilities that we always dreamed about but were never quite able to achieve. And it has also given us instant gratification that is, undeniably, exhilarating.

So that's what the Digital PhotoCorner is about and I hope you'll allow me -- and other guest contributors -- to drag you kicking and screaming (with delight, of course) into the new Photodigital Age. Thanks for clicking in.

Arthur H. Bleich, Publisher