Bio for Gary L. Friedman
Gary L. Friedman is a professional photographer who has traveled the world with his cameras and runs the stock image website FriedmanArchives.com. He has also written several highly-acclaimed e-books on digital imaging, all aimed at demystifying the complexities of digital cameras. His photography and writing has been published in magazines, newspapers, and books worldwide, and he is associate editor of CameraCraft magazine in the UK, the antithesis of your typical photo magazine (which you can subscribe to here.) He was also listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for building the world’s smallest telephone way back in 1980 (before cell phones or cordless phones were around).
Before graduating to photography he was a rocket scientist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he patented the image authentication system now used in high-end digital cameras from Canon and Nikon, and published the book “Control the World with HP-IL“, a technical book showing how to interface Hewlett Packard handheld calculators (like the HP-41C and HP-71B; the most powerful handheld computers on earth at the time) to the outside world.
Frustrated with the inability to commercialize his patents, he left JPL after 10 years to learn how to run a business. He founded an Information Technology Consulting firm and grew it from 1 person and 1 telephone to a $10M/yr firm and 22 employees within three years. A tour of duty with a dot-com followed. We all know what happened after that. 🙂
Gary’s best-known works are the 1988 “Peace Child in Latvia”, a photojournalistic documentary about a historic exchange between Soviet and American high-school student back in the days of the cold war, his 2003 China Blog about his adventures teaching English in China, and his 2018 tour in Vietnam where he documented the humanitarian work of Hearts for Hue, helping the poorest neglected citizens of this former capital care for themselves.
Gary keeps busy now with photo assignments, image licensing, writing books, and acting as a distributor for a most unique musical instrument called a Xaphoon. In his spare time (Ha!) he is traveling the world offering highly-acclaimed photography seminars to any photo club that wants it. He can be reached at Gary@FriedmanArchives.com.