The first time I ever had a photograph of mine published was while I was a student attending Ryerson University in Toronto for film and photography. I studied at "Ry High" through 1980 and half of 1981 and during my brief time there I shot for the campus newspaper called "The Ryerson Eyeopener." I was also a regular contributor to a Toronto Star column called "Have your Say" where readers of the newspaper were invited to submit photos for potential publication. I had several images published in this amateur column before I ever started shooting professionally. I left Ryerson mid way through my second year because I had been hired as the official publicity photographer for the Ontario Jockey Club harness racing division which was the largest harness racing industry in Canada. I saw no reason to continue my studies in photography when I was already working full time in the field. Through the five years I worked shooting horse racing I had hundreds of images published in the three major Toronto newspapers, The Toronto Star, The Toronto Sun and the Globe and Mail, and also various horse racing trade magazines such as "Trot" and "The Standarbred" but I only ever kept a few of those news clippings and magazine covers for posterity. In my early years as a photographer I was also hired to capture a skydiving image that was used in an advertisement for DeHavilland aircraft. Additionally, an image I shot of a local glider pilot in a practice flight performed at my skydiving centre was submitted by the pilot to Canada post for a series of stamps they were issuing showcasing various aircraft. To my delight... one of my photographs is now on a Canadian stamp. I left horse racing photography in 1985 and began shooting for a local community newspaper where I lived called "The Mississauga News". Toward the end of my time there I had been given my own photographic column entitled "Focus" and I was assigned various community events to shoot and given a full broadsheet newspaper page to showcase the images. Shooting for the Mississauga News was a fun job but it didn't pay very much and I didn't see that ever improving so I decided to shift career goals entirely. I had always thought of having a career in firefighting and I pursued that opportunity in earnest in early 1986. To my delight I was hired full time in Markham, Ontario and began my career in firefighting on August 5th of that year. While working as a firefighter I started several photographic businesses from the ground up as a second form in income. In the mid eighties I developed and operated two separate businesses in skydiving photography that ran until 2012 and one business in tournament hockey photography that also ended in 2012. Many of my favourite images from those years are also on this web site in the digital images galleries.
© Steve Tambosso - "The Wandering Fireman"