Don has been self-employed his throughout his entire working history... even as a young teenager.

His creative parents, who met in art school, had a photographic darkroom at home. They gave Don his first camera when he was age 5, and by the time he was 6 years old, Don learned to develop his own photographs in the family darkroom.

They also started teaching Don to play guitar and piano at around the same young age. Later by age 13 Don was playing music at teen dances with a local rock band - thus began his first success at being self-employed.

At age 16 he rented a teaching studio at a local music store, paying the store a fee for his use of the room to give music lessons. Don taught guitar, electric bass, and keyboard as a self-employed instructor.

Over the next year he joined forces with a couple of his students, to form what was to become the most popular local teen band during the mid 1960s.

He and his band members rented a large dance hall where they put together teen dances, attracting up to 2,000 kids each week. By this time the entrepreneurial bug really bit him.

During his college years three experiences took place that would shape his life:
a. Don rediscovered his love of photography and began studying it in earnest
b. Don and two friends built a commercial audio recording studio, which helped him develop his love for audio
c. Don met Mary Ann who has been a positive influence in his life for almost 40 years now

Upon completing college Don started his photography business as a sideline while working in the recording business, playing bass in a jazz trio, and still giving private music lessons. Eventually music became a side interest while his lifelong passion for photography became his career.

He built Don Schenk Photography, Inc. into the largest portrait studio facility in Hamilton County. And as an offshoot of the photography business he started self-publishing "how-to" books and courses on audio for other business owners.

Don holds the coveted Photographic Craftsman's degree from the PPA for his dedication to teaching photography to other professional photographers throughout the United States.

He is a member of the American Society of Photographers. Membership is by invitation only to the top photographers in the U.S. and Canada. He is also a member of the prestigious Professional Photographers Society of Ohio - with membership by unanimous invitation, limited to the best, most creative photographers in the State of Ohio.

Don's passions include photography, playing music, downhill skiing and the town of Park City, Utah.