Rising Stars: Meet Michael Nyiri of Harbor City

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Nyiri

Hi Michael, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’ve recently begun my eighth decade on this planet, so asking for a even a brief summation of my story could take some time. Our family moved to Los Angeles when I was three years old, in 1956. Then we moved to El Monte in the San Gabriel Valley around the time I began attending elementary school. I came from a creative family and exhibited creative tendencies from childhood. I was an avid reader and got high marks in all my classes, allowing time for my creative urges to develop. As a child, I would draw, assemble collages, make models, and write. I began writing poetry at the age of 14 and finished a novel while in high school. My tenure in high school, at Rosemead High in the SGV included a year long stint as editor of the school newspaper and appearances in school plays.

My dream was to eventually write the all American novel and become famous.

I majored in English literature in college, minoring in film history. Sadly, my parents died young, while I was in my 20s, and I dropped out of college at USC in my final year, and began to concentrate on my business career in retail management.

Any creative juices coursing through me began to dry up, and although I still might draw or create a cartoon now and then, and I never stopped writing poetry, most of my energy and time was spent on my business career. By 1987, after climbing the management ladder at three sequential SoCal retail chains which kept going out of business, I switched careers, and began a fruitful 34 year association with a small electrical controls manufacturing firm in Long Beach.

Work took up most of my time. My social life was full and fulfilling. Although I never married, and never had a long term relationship, I had many intense short term flings, and my social circles were many, spinning about my life with restless abandon. Eventually the social circles stopped spinning, friends either died or moved away, and work kept taking up more and more time. I ran production and did all the design work and estimating for the control panels our company sold in the industrial sector. I moved from apartment to apartment around the South Bay, living alone, or with girlfriends and roommates, through most of the 1980s through the early 2000s.

In 2009 I bought my first house, a small mobile home located in the harbor area of Los Angeles, where I now live.

The creative side of me got a great boost of adrenaline when I bought my first home computer in 1997 at the age of 45. I got on the internet the next year, and created my first personal website, AllThingsMike, in 1999. The site showcased my poetry and my art. I founded online writing and poetry groups. My website, dubbed “an electronic experiment in art” almost went all the way to the top of “The Site Fights.”

I added a blog to my website in 2004. It was on the Xanga service, which was pretty popular for a few years. My blog entries on WhenWordsCollide never went “viral” but I did have entries featured on the “front page” numerous times. I wrote quite a few serialized “blognovels” but the series which seemed be most popular were my “Photo Posts”. I had a small Sony Cybershot camera and would take “Photo Expeditions” around the South Bay, posting photos of my “trips around town” on the blog.

Xanga went out of business in 2013, and in 2015 I bought my first DSLR camera, a Sony t5i Rebel. I began experimenting with HDR pretty early. I also began taking more trips outside the South Bay, saving money, and eventually eliminating a pretty large credit card debt.

I’m really organized and a constant planner. I had debts to pay, and I figured I’d own my car and house, and by 2020 would take early retirement at the age of 67. The pandemic dashed those plans, but I recovered some of my savings, I did pay off my debts, and I retired from the electrical profession at the end of 2022 at the age of 69.

I’m now able to concentrate on my “third career”, that of “artistic photographer” and two years into retirement I’ve already visited 5 foreign countries and taken many domestic trips around the USA, usually one trip every two or three months. These trips are all “Photo Expeditions” and I’ve taken hundreds, if not thousands of photos I process, post to my social media streams and offer for sale on my website store.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I always like to characterize myself as an optimist, and right now looking my third act I must say I feel pretty lucky, happy, and fulfilled (if never satisfied). My road has been long and lately it seems to be smoothly paved and I see bright lights ahead. Retirement has been possibly my best time of life, so far.

However, the road behind me has been filled with potholes, detours, and closures. I was born a twin, but my sister died at birth. I had difficulties in childhood with sickness and pain. I wouldn’t say I was a “sickly” child, but I did have to miss one semester of 2nd grade because of a dislocated ear drum and ear infection and a car wreck at 14 broke my jaw, causing dental problems which are not still fully healed.

I was 21 when Dad passed away following a massive heart attack, and Mom was in a nursing home fully paralyzed from complications following a stroke. Mom died a few years later, never recovering. They were in their 50s, cut down in the prime of life. At a time when I was just experiencing the budding throes of manhood, and I was a bit of a party animal in those days, I was torn spiritually and emotionally by the passing of my parents and the change in my life, which had mostly been pretty predictable until then.

A chronic condition in my left hip caused me to have to have a hip replacement at the age of 42, and I’ve had another “hip revision” to replace the prosthesis in 2009 when the screws became loose.

Three of my best friends died young. While not a struggle for me personally, since I seem to keep getting healthier and am taking a lot less risks than I did in the past, losing those close to me has been a struggle to understand. I lost one buddy when he was 37 from a fall, another when he was 47 from a heart attack, and the last, a longtime friend and roommate, passed at 54 from cancer.

It could be said that my romantic adventures, or lack thereof were signposts declaring “Danger” upon my road to now, where I’m fully contented to be alone (not lonely) and unencumbered. One fairly longtime relationship, in the 90s, lasted 5 years. I moved in with a gal with whom I loved deeply. She had two teenagers, and our little “family” was a bit dysfunctional. After we broke up, I used the internet to perform a “lovesearch” and lost a lot of trust (and money) when two relationships, one right after the other, ended on a sour note. My last relationship was with a gal who is still a good friend. We were friends before our “romance” and our relationship was (and is) better as a friendship anyway.

Also I wouldn’t have ever called myself an “addict” but I lived a pretty hedonistic life in the 70s and 80s. There was always a party at my place. Marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, alcohol. All were drugs of choice and I gobbled quite a few tabs of LSD in my day, as well. However if I had to do it all over again, I might still like the social scene, but I would forego the drugs and alcohol. I quit drinking, and taking all recreational drugs in 2015 and am almost a decade completely sober. I don’t need drugs or alcohol now, and didn’t then either, but you live and learn. (If you’re lucky enough to live.)

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
It’s always interesting to me when I hear my photography hobby or my photographs described as “work.” More like “play”. Now happily retired, I love to go out and take new pictures, and love to pour through my massive archives of photos I’ve already taken but never processed, and create new images.

Of all my lifetime’s creative endeavors, I am concentrating on my photography at this juncture. My format of choice is HDR. HDR (high dynamic range) is a process where the camera takes three different exposures when the shutter is depressed. The three images are later combined using computer software to bring details out of the shadows and enhance color. Upon witnessing HDR for the first time, most folks seem to proclaim the photos “look like paintings.” My first images were overcooked and terribly “cartoony” but after almost a decade concentrating on my “artistic photography” I have been told by other photographers I’m creating some of the best HDR images they’ve ever seen. It might take me up to an hour to individually process an image, and the process is really stimulating to me. Both the shooting and the enhancement.

My subjects are natural and architectural. I don’t take portraits or photos of people. In fact, I like to go to popular places very early in the morning before crowds arrive so I can take unencumbered photos of the buildings or architecture. I love our National Parks and I love visiting new places. I also like visiting familiar places and making an attempt to find a new “angle” or “perspective” to shoot.

I don’t sell many images (yet, the optimist in me adds) but my small followings on social media seem to enjoy seeing my daily postings of new pictures, now encompassing the shots I’ve taken on my globetrotting trips. Recently I gave a “slideshow” in the clubhouse of the mobile home estates where I live, projecting photos and giving commentary. There are plans for more of these in the coming year. I also hope to be able to present my “work” (that word again) in galleries and in places like Laguna Beach’s Sawdust Festival. But for now, my main concentration isn’t on promotion, but on being able to create the “art” for as long as I can.

It might be said I’m most proud of the fact I’m still alive and vibrant and able both physically and financially to do what I want to do. I’m always saying that for every pitfall or problem there is something positive and surprising to counter, there’s good balancing the bad. I not only love to photograph sunrises and sunsets, I understand them as the bookends to the day, and all my days are rich and rewarding.

I don’t know that anything “sets me apart” from anyone else. We’re all people and I strongly believe even those who don’t actively engage in an artistic or entrepreneurial endeavor of some sort have creative tendencies, possibly they are just buried. I do know that if you meet me, you will probably remember me. I like to meet people, and I love constructive, positive conversation. A lot of people I know, and people whom I read about, seem to be negative and dismal a lot of the time, and hopefully my optimism and common sense sets me apart from them!

Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
I really don’t have much advice in this regard. I’m still learning about networking. And at 71, I seem to answer a lot of younger folks’ questions. My “mentors” are my longtime creative friends. I do know that just having an online presence isn’t enough. You need to work at getting yourself out there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.allthingsmike.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michael_f_nyiri_photography/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.f.nyiri/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/mikevideo
• Other: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelFNyiriPhotography

Image Credits
Michael F. Nyiri