My name is David Ditta. I can be contacted by calling 707.480.4557, if I don’t pick up, please leave a message.
Early Life and Education
I grew up around cameras, my parents documenting our lives with a Leica and a Kodak Retina, as well as a movie camera. Very early on, I have memories of a parent letting me look through the viewfinder and push the shutter release, while they held the camera.
About age nine, I got my first personal camera, a Kodak Starmite- and still have it! I later inherited the German-made Kodak Retina IIIc, with interchangable lenses; my first quality camera. At nineteen I had saved up and bought a Pentax H3V in black- very cool. Many cameras later, I’m still taking pictures- digital now- and have a large antique and vintage camera collection as well which can be seen on this web site.
At a very early age I was introduced to David Douglas Duncan on board ship while we were headed overseas, and actually got to hold his Leica. Maybe that was one of the triggers that got me hooked on shooting. Still have some pictures of him taken by my father.
While in high school, I was invited to an intimate seminar at UCSC with the noted photographer Walker Evans, and was photographed by Evans.
I majored in Photography and Video at College of Marin, where I studied under Timo Pajunen and Wendy Blair. After that I transferred to San Francisco State University, having as my photo adviser Jack Welpott, (also my neighbor in San Anselmo), and studying photo-journalism under Neal White.
Later in life, I visited Imogen Cunningham at her house in San Francisco, and met other noted photographers like Eikoh Hosoe, and Jerry Uelsmann.
Commercial Photography and Video
I have taken numerous commercial photography and video classes and seminars over the years, including Phase One / Capture One- San Francisco, Scitex Rightouch school-Boston, Scitex Blaze school-Chicago, The Bay Area Video Coalition, and shot commercial for twenty years at Pacific Digital Image in San Francisco.
I regularly shot for GAP, Rayban, Banana Republic, Gymboree, Sprint, Williams-Sonoma, Barefoot Wines, Rodan+Fields, Reebok, CISCO, ebay, Kendo, Lens Crafters, Bare Escentuals, Muscle Milk, Dial, Google, Keen, and many others.
I am also a retoucher, doing work for the most demanding clients, first on Scitex workstations and then in 1992 on a Mac, using Photoshop. Additionally, I taught Advanced Photoshop, and Building web pages using Flash and Dreamweaver at the Graphic Arts Institute in San Francisco.
I now am available for freelance shooting, consulting, and teaching.
Other Projects:
NASA / SETI Traveling Educational Program “Voyages Through Time”
Human Evolution Module
California State University System
Educational DVD “Groundwater and Groundwater Contamination”
California Academy of Sciences “Missing Links” Exhibit
Interactive kiosk
Comparing bipedality of modern humans and chimpanzees.
