Welcome to DBatesPhoto18up.com, My name is Donald Bates. I am a Photographer from Madison, Alabama near Huntsville the Rocket city. I have lived in the area for nearly 35 years moving here
when I was 4 months old, but the roots of my family tree have been buried in Alabama Clay for over 300 years on both sides of my family. While I expected to follow my father’s foot steps into the military some things along the way caused me to take a different path.

I have worked many jobs over the past 16 years since I first went to work flipping burgers for the King and to be honest this is not what I ever dreamed of doing as a kid. Even though I always dreamed of being a pilot or at least working around Aircraft Photography has always been a major interest of mine. When I first started taking Photography serious back in the late 90s I had already been shooting near 20 years. I picked up my first camera not long after I began walking and bought my first 110 camera while
on vacation the summer I turned 6. It was while working in the local club scene that a friend showed me that you did not have to shoot family or class photos to make a good living in photography and I dove in head first. I started out shooting local bands at a club I still worked on occasion while going to Calhoun Community College for a Photography degree. Most of those bands are not together anymore and the main club is an empty building. I learned a lot shooting in dark smoke filled clubs around town.
One night while shooting a band one of their girlfriends, a local dancer I worked with, came to see the show. After finding out I was shooting she mentioned it to one of the other girls that we worked with and next thing I knew I was shooting several of the girls there and a few other clubs as well as doing some promo shoots for the clubs. Oddly enough I started on a career in Photography because I wanted to get away from working in the clubs, but I am happy that while I no longer work in them on a
regular basis I can still pop in and see several of my friends working at some of the clubs all over town and occasionally get them in front of my camera.

I have been called DBatesPhoto on the web for the past decade. I created this site to show off the wilder side of my portfolio. While mature photos only make up a small portion of my portfolio these days. These are the type of photos that got me started in this business and I am as proud of these shoots as I am of any of my photos taken over the past decade.