More about Paul Horsted...possibly more than you want to know.

My photography experience dates back to high school days in Brandon, South Dakota, long, long ago. My first camera was an old Voightlander model Dad had purchased while stationed with the U.S. Army in Germany. The camera required something called “film”, which had to be periodically re-loaded into the camera, usually while the winning touchdown was being scored. The camera did not require flash cards, imaging sensors, cables, CD’s, LCD’s, Photoshop, WiFi networks, or even a battery. Just a good eye and a ready shutter finger.

Having moved to digital photography years ago, I don't miss those days much, however. Sure there are times I still reminisce about spending half the day in a cramped, stuffy darkroom to produce one really good print a client could then accidentally use as a coffee coaster, but time and technology marches on.

Seriously, the debate over “film vs. digital” will probably go on for at least a few more weeks, but today’s computerized tools really do give a photographer much greater flexibility and capability to produce images and art that couldn’t be dreamed of back in the Age of Film. These tools can also drive you crazy, (especially the Windows versions), but some of history’s craziest people have been the most creative! So that works for us here (even though we’re Mac people).

Well, if you’ve scrolled this far, you may like to know I've been working as an independent freelance photographer for the past 15 years, with numerous national credits in magazines, books and corporate advertising. I license my photographs as stock for advertising and editorial uses, shoot on assignment for the great people at Crazy Horse Memorial (just up the road from our office) and other Black Hills-area clients. On very rare occasions, for very special people, at very $pecial price$, I may even photograph a outdoor wedding here in the beautiful Black Hills.

Earlier in my career, I worked as a newspaper photographer (Brandon Valley, S.D. Reporter, and Sioux Falls, S.D. Argus Leader), where I photographed car wrecks, blizzards, floods, droughts, politics and other disasters the editor ordered me to shoot. But I also got to meet and photograph many great people of this great state of South Dakota through the newspaper biz. Later in my career, I was the chief photographer at South Dakota Tourism, where I traveled the highways and byways of the state, and met and photographed the REST of the people in the state (this IS a small state, only 2 degrees of separation here). I learned about a place called “The Black Hills”, little knowing it would one day be my home and the place where I would meet my future wife, Camille Riner.

I'm a 1987 graduate of South Dakota State University in Brookings. While at SDSU, I was the photography editor of the campus yearbook, The Jack Rabbit. Now THERE was a stuffy darkroom. But it was a lot of fun too. Seriously (really), “State” gave me the educational boost I needed to get where I am today, and as their slogan says, “You can go anywhere from here”. Why they chose me to be in one of their TV commercials featuring successful graduates such as our Governor and rocket scientists and the like, I’ll never understand.

Back to the present: In addition to photography, Camille and I operate Golden Valley Press, a design, art and book publishing company, from World Headquarters (our house) in the woods north of Custer, South Dakota. My latest book is “The Black Hills Yesterday & Today." In addition to ongoing photography of the landscape here, I continue my research on Black Hills explorers and the history of this fascinating and beautiful corner of the world.

If this tongue-in-cheek biography has not satisfied your curiosity, please send me an email with your questions, thoughts, feedback, comments, suggestions, advice, problems, or answers. Especially answers.

P.H.