Phil Bair's photography and fascination with image manipulation goes back to his high school multimedia mischief. In addition to his off-the-wall experiments in the dark room, Phil would make image montages by cutting and pasting samples from his own photography and combining them with photos from magazines and even his father's slide photos of family vacation spots in the West. He would then mount the montages on foam core and take pictures of the pictures with 35mm slide film. The result was eye-popping multimedia presentations that earned him the admiration of his teachers and peers, as well as nothing but A's for photography and media.

Being a musician didn't hurt the process, as he would combine some of his own musical compositions as well as his favorite orchestral pieces (e.g. The Pines of Rome, and Journey to the Center of the Earth) with his imaginative imagery to generate slide shows and media presentations that would transport his audiences to new worlds of wonder and enchantment.

That was high school.

Now that the digital camera has come of age in the professional world, Phil has not hesitated to leverage this exciting new technology to its fullest potential, bringing