Business Life and Beyond

2143 Words5 Pages

A few years after the official opening of the studio, the business incorporated registering under the name of “Swiridoff Photography, Inc. At the same time I became more active in the Professional Photographers Association of Central California, participating in local state and national events. Encouraged by a dear friend, Elmer Kingham of Redlands, I prepared a topic and went on a lecture-circuit up and down the state presenting it to other local Photographer Associations. This was one of the requirements counting towards the total cumulative merit-points required for a Master’s Degree in photography as well as national exhibit-merits and the merits received for attending extension courses offered by the State association at the West Coast School of Photography in Santa Barbara. I usually went there as part of my annual one-week vacation, enjoying camaraderie of colleagues and expanding own horizons in special areas of photography, sometimes taking along one of my employees.

Then followed years of my holding positions on the board of local and state organizations, finally serving as the president of PPCC, which was a great opportunity to give back to the profession some of what I had learned in the process of running my business. Interestingly, One of my first speaking engagements took me to Redlands, about 300 miles to the southeast of Fresno, where I presented a program to the Inland Empire Photographers Association. On that occasion I also visited my dear friends Lisa and Neil Adair in their studio and spent the night in the home of Elmer and Vera Kingham on 811 West Olive Street. (Same street number as our first address in Fresno) Little did I know that 30 years later I would become a “regular” in Redlands and that I, m...

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...professional life as a photographer and businessman, there were other ways by which my life has been greatly enriched. First and foremost by our children, who came into our lives as unexpected miracles, and later by events that lead to my reconnection with my Russian roots and then also in a very extraordinary way by assisting at and witnessing the miracle of live-birth-events of our two god-children Katharina, my brother Paul’s daughter, he fathered at his young and virile age of 80 and then Alexa, my Russian namesake, born in November of 1995. At this writing, as grandparents, having the joy of observing at a distance the parenting skills of our children on our 6 talented grandchildren, Connor, Caleb, Collin, Cassandra, Clarissa and Christian, wondering what their mission in life is, “what worlds they might conquer and to what distant planets they might travel…”

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