The tension mounted.  A hush came over the audience, a drum roll thundered in the distance and finally the announcement, “The winner is Stuart Lynn.” The crowd cheered.

This scenario was repeated again five more times at the annual camera club awards banquet.  Not only did Stuart win the title of Photographer of the Year, but was also awarded first and second in the Image of the Year category, as well as three honorable mentions.

I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone to know that Stuart, a native of London, England, comes from a long line of photographers. 

 “My father was a gifted amateur photographer and my uncle a professional photographer,” he explained.  “Both inspired me. I was rocking trays in my father's darkroom at the age of four.  My first camera was a Brownie box camera.  As a teenager I eventually took over my father’s darkroom, learning for myself.”

Many years later he taught himself the craft of imaging on the computer by scanning film.  A variety of film cameras have passed through his darkroom over the years, but two years ago he finally went digital with a Nikon 5700. Today he is having a love affair with a Canon Digital Rebel SLR.

He joined our Club in 2000 after having picked up a flier at the Camera Exchange in Palm Springs. Shortly after, he co-founded DIPSIG, our digital photography interest group. 

This man is not only talented when it comes to taking photographs, but he is the creative brain behind our camera club web site.  He built it and maintains it, and we continue to be thankful to him as we surf easily through the pictures, stories and announcements. He has also just launched the S4C electronic imaging division competition.

Stuart first came to the U.S. in 1958 as a graduate student to attend UCLA.  In 1960 he married Barbara here in the desert at her parent’s home, returned to England two years later for a postdoctorate, and subsequently returned permanently to the U.S. in 1964.  They have two daughters, one son, two granddaughters and three grandsons.

His career is complicated and impressive but in a nutshell, he has retired three times.  The first retirement, from the position as Vice President for Information Technologies at Cornell University was in 1994.  He managed to stay out of the workforce for one year until  the University of California offered him the position of Associate Vice President in the Office of the President.  He retired a second time in 1999 when he and Barbara moved to the desert. 

That didn’t last! He became President of ICANN for two years, a not-for-profit company that coordinates all the names and addresses on the Internet across the world. Traveling with ICANN gave him the opportunity to take many travel photos.   In March of 2003 he retired for the third and final time. Now he has the time to become fully active in our Club.

“Right now I enjoy macro photography but also landscapes,” he said.  “The Club is a wonderful place to develop one’s skills. Our members are quite special and terrific people and I enjoy learning from them.  But I’d like to see more shared critiquing and more outings/workshops, with less focus on competition.  This would give us more room for creative exploration outside of the PSA straightjacket.”