britt k leckman, photographer...Examples

I have been taking pictures for as long as I can remember. My interest in photography from the start was encouraged and supported by my parents. When I was nine or ten, my mother lent me her Kodak Retina camera to take photos in and around my hometown, Seal Beach in Southern Californina. My parents also generously allowed me to pay my film and processing fees at the local drug store on thier charge account.

Being your typical mid 1960's surf and beach crazed youngster, I wanted to take pictures of surfing, like the stunning photos in "Surfer Magazine" . Needles to say this was a little unrealistic, but carrying the camera around with me opened my eyes to the shape and form of life around me. The Little Retina and some of those images I took back in those glorious days of carefree sun and surf survive to this day buried somewhere deep in the bowels of my mother's garage. As I got older and (one hopes) more responsible my father lent (or gave...) me several of his more expensive cameras to use through the years, including a Rollei 2.8F, which I used off and on for nearly a decade. Alas the Rollie was stolen along with my first Leica while working at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, an event that filled me with grief the depth of which still surprises me to this day.

Photography has always been a large part of my life, and I have nearly always found myself working in positions that allowed me the opportunity to take photos on the job. When serving with the U.S. Coast Guard aboard the USCGC Midgett, I acted as the ship's photographer. After leaving the service, while working as the Audio Visual Services Manager at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, I was able take photos at many of the numerous press conferneces and special events held in the club. I spent a brief period of time in Moscow Russia, just after the fall of Communisim, at the International Press Center and Club, that gig didn't last long, but it was fun, and Moscow was rife with photographic posibilities. On my return to the States, I coasted my way through a photography degree while working at Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason University.

After all the years flirting with photographic legitimacy, it was not until I was 40 that I landed a full time position as a professional photographer. I have for the last seven years happily filled my days taking photogrpahs as the Staff Photographer for the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors in Washington, DC.

Photography has evolved in ways that I could not imagine just a few years ago while studying for my photography degree. Digital was on the horizon to be sure, but was priced so that only the really succcessful studios could afford the technology. When I started working at the Board in 1998, it was a 100 % film shop, with on-site E6 and black and white facilities. Now I shoot about 12,000 images a year digitally compared to perhaps fewer than 100 frames of film for the Fed. Of course for my personal work, I still shoot about 1000 frames/sheets a year, which then get scanned to digital. I can't remember the last time I actually printed anything. I feel that the process of printing from a digital file rather than a physical negative or transparency afords so much more control in the look of the final output. With digital (whether from capture or scans) I can can better realize the image in it's final form what I saw when I took the tripped the shutter.

Very little of my overtly professional work for the Federal Reserve has been included in this website. My reticence to include images from the Board is partly out of concern for security (especially following 9/11) but it also addresses those ethical issues of including photos on a personal website that do not belong to me, even if I took them. As the Board's staff photographer, all images I make in the course of my duties here belong to the Federal Reserve, and are considered permanent records. Another wrinkle particular to myself and other photographers working directly for the government, is that most of my work falls imediately into the public domain, subject to review for public release.


I would like to feel that this website contains mostly a body of my personal work.