Steve Tambosso

In 1981-82 I studied film and fine art photography at Ryerson University in Toronto but left in my second year to pursue a lucrative business opportunity as the official publicity photographer for the Standardbred division of the Ontario Jockey Club. I was responsible for providing the numerous trade magazines and Toronto city newspapers with action photography of their harness racing operations. After leaving the track in 1985 I went to work as a staff photographer for the Mississauga News, a small community newspaper near Toronto but left in 1986 when I was hired on as a full-time firefighter. I had already begun skydiving in 1979 at the age of 19 and by 1986 I had developed the first wing strut mounted camera skydiving photography operation in Canada selling souvenir photographs to first jump student static line skydivers. That business operated for 28 years from 1986 until 2012. During that time I also personally logged over 6,500 skydives and a thousand or more of those jumps were as a tandem videographer/photographer providing first time tandem student skydivers with images of their jump. From 2006-2012 I also operated a successful hockey photography business selling action images of minor league tournament hockey games throughout Ontario to the parents of the players. Those two photographic operations were conducted concurrently with my 30.5 year career as a full time city firefighter. I retired from the fire service on January 31st, 2017 and my only interests now are in traveling the world photographing (and now also writing) about my travels as “The Wandering Fireman.