David Levene

I'm a photographer in Dublin, New Hampshire, and I can trace the whole thing back to my father's workbench and my dentist's waiting room.

My father repaired the family's 35mm Nikkormat film cameras and built a darkroom at home to develop Kodak Tri-X. The ventilation was famously bad, and the wiring to the Omega enlarger was not exactly to code, so my early lessons came with the occasional shock.

The real awakening happened at the dentist. A childhood weakness for Dubble Bubble earned me many white-knuckled hours in the chair, wondering whether my dentist had skipped the class on anesthesia. To cope, I studied the walls, which were covered in black-and-white travel photographs, and made myself a promise: I'm going to do that too someday, assuming I survive the drilling.

After that the Nikkormat went everywhere with me: rock concerts in the 1970s, bicycle tours across New England, family gatherings. Later I studied black-and-white darkroom technique and digital editing at the Maine Media Workshops, then made the move to digital. I'm still loyal to Nikon. The camera has carried me around the world on birding trips and wildlife safaris, and back home to Dublin, where I find just as much to photograph in my homegrown garlic, my dahlias, and my pets.