Tad Boomer

I credit my ability to learn and achieve through my six years in the USAF. I enlisted at age 17. After basic training and technical schools, I was accepted on special assignment to the USAF Presidential Honor Guard at times putting me within inches of the President and foreign dignitaries. After my assignment was up, I returned to my primary field which was security police but they had not slots open for me, so I was given the choice to be discharged or cross-train into another profession. I choose to be an Administrative Specialist for which I had to train on-the-job and via correspondence classes. I was able to adapt and learn quickly and soon became not only a problem solver but developed new ways to increase efficiency so much so that when President Carter ordered reviews of all less than honorable discharges from the military during the Vietnam Era I was put on temporary duty with the Secretary of The USAF Personnel Council and headed up the administrative unit. There were no procedures for this massive a review and I was tasked with developing the procedures to receive, log, distribute and track thousands of cases while providing administrative and logistical support for the lawyers. The mission was a success.

I'm very proud of my time in the military and my assignments in particular given that it was a tremendous amount of responsibility for a person of 21 years of age. But I like to tell it in these biographies as I was always able to use the foundation I learned during my early years to every job that I have every held and now my own company.

In 1996, I used my ability to learn on the job and started taking photos of men for content providers for this new commercial entity called the internet. I learned through reading everything I could get my hands on and when I started shooting for magazines, I learned more by communicating with the various Art Directors. While the material I was photographing was for the adult entertainment industry I always took extra shots for my personal portfolio that were artistic or reflective of the models personality. However, adult entertainment was paying quite handsomely so I continued, even starting a web site of my own. That website led to the my starting to shoot videos on top of the photographs. At first, shorts of individual models and eventually, I developed three feature length videos, one of which I wrote the script. It was extremely challenging at the time given that the digital revolution hadn't happened yet. But by 2001, after working almost 7 days a week with no vacation, I finally decided that I wanted to take some time and move on to more artistic and mainstream endeavours.

While resting I decided that I would give school a shot so I enrolled in the Art Institute of Atlanta for the Multimedia Degree. It was there that I learned some basics about the various medias and in story telling. I was unable to finish the program to get a degree due to family matters but I had learned enough that I felt I could autodidact the rest.

Now I run a successful freelance photography business that specializes in the photography of men. When I'm not photographing for hire, I am usually photographing time for photos to aspiring actors and models to help them build a nice portfolio while also providing some nice photos for mine and getting a first hand look at how they handle direction and their presence on camera.

In addition to my photography I have another passion which is writing. I have often joked that I should write a comedic story about my life similar to what Emma Bombeck did with her movie The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank (1978) . However, I can't think of anyone men who have the comedic genius of Carol Burnett.

I have however, resurrected my old studio, Mens Den Entertainment, and given it a new mission which will be to develop gay themed dramatic and comedic short and feature length films to entertain while bringing awareness to social issues. And since there are many issues that are too important to tell in a dramatic format, I will be doing investigative research into matters that effect the LGBTQ community but are seldom brought to light in the mainstream which I will be producing some (I hope) award winning documentaries.