At age 11, Dianne Gregg spent her time at Camp Ramapo falling in love with photography and learning how to sew.

"I came home and I told my parents I wanted to be a photographer, and they said 'No. Too expensive,' " Gregg recalls. "So I said, 'OK, I'll be a fashion designer.' "

That she did --- and she followed through with her first love, too.

Today, Gregg is a commercial photographer --- light years away from that old campground in upstate New York and the black-and-white photographs of her youth.

Gregg runs DG Photography from a studio in her Buckhead home, and her picture-taking has gone high tech.

These days, she shoots with digital cameras and has two computers --- a Mac and a PC --- to run the digital imaging software she uses to create picture-perfect photographs for her clients' brochures, catalogs, ads and other marketing materials.

Even Gregg marvels at how far she's come. "I was the one who didn't want to give up my typewriter," she laughs.

She not only gave it up, she has plunged into the Information Age, taking classes in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXPress, Advanced Word and Microsoft PowerPoint from the New Horizons computer training center in Tucker. The software has become as much of a tool in her photography as her camera.

That's because the new technology allows Gregg control over the photographed image that she previously did not have. "Before the technology, I would have to wait for the beautiful day, the blue skies," Gregg says. "Or when there were trees or (telephone) poles, I'd have to shoot them in a way so that they could be cropped out."

Now, Gregg addresses those issues sitting at her computer. For instance, for a recent assignment to shoot a local hotel for a promotional brochure, the Atlanta skies were overcast and gray --- not exactly an inviting image for a brochure. There was one advantage of the weather: The sun hidden behind the clouds meant no shadows in the photo. So, Gregg shot the building, gray skies and all.

After the film was developed in slide form, Gregg took it to a custom-development lab, which used a computer scanner to translate the image into digital form. It returned it to Gregg on a CD. Back in her studio, Gregg worked from the CD, replacing the gray horizon with a crystal-blue skyline.

"What I like to do is enhance it, not change it," Gregg says.

In other words, her goal is to make a less-than-perfect conditions "more appealing" so that her final photograph "fits with the client's overall marketing image," she says.

Though she was exposed to photography as a child, Gregg's passion for taking pictures didn't fully develop until many years later. In high school, she took "vo-tech" classes in dress design. After graduation, she enrolled in the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, where she studied fashion design and merchandising.

For the next several years, Gregg made her living first selling her designs to boutiques and individual customers. She moved to Atlanta in 1982, eventually taking a job as a showroom coordinator and retail sales merchandiser.

After years of snapping amateur pictures of her daughter, Gregg got a 35 mm camera for Christmas and she promptly discarded her Instamatic. "I was ecstatic, and I realized if I really knew what I as doing, I could do a lot with this," she says.

To learn more, she enrolled in a three-year correspondence course with the New York Institute of Photography. While she studied and continued to work in the apparel industry, Gregg began taking headshots and shooting fashion shows part time.

By 1989, she lost her apparel job as the industry went through a wave of mergers and consolidation. By this time, Gregg had finished the photography course. As a professional photographer, she began sending out postcards to advertise her services. A local apartment complex developer hired Gregg for her first full-time photography job, fulfilling her childhood dream.

Her business has grown steady, and Gregg expects her revenues to top $50,000 this year. Although she shoots the photos herself, to complete her projects Gregg convenes a production team that includes not only the custom photo lab but also a graphics designer, Web designer and printer.

And when she's not making pictures? "In my spare time, I still sew," she says.

ABOUT DIANNE GREGG
Title: Commercial photographer
Revenue: Gregg expects to earn more than $50,000 this year.
Education: Studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Earned certificate in photography from New York Institute of Photography. Has taken computer classes in Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXPress, Advanced Word and Microsoft PowerPoint at the New Horizons computer training center.
Qualifications: A person who wants to do commercial photography must understand basic elements of photography, including composition, balance and lighting, Gregg says. In addition, to make the most of the available technology, you must be familiar with digital imaging software. "The most important thing is being able to communicate and understand the client's needs," she says.

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Dianne Gregg Photography
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