Why am I a photographer?
I began as a kid photographer in the ’70’s, inspired by my Dad who was a photo buff with his darkroom in the garage, making us pose for family portraits so he could practice developing Cibachrome prints. Although I probably pretended to hate doing it the whole time, I took an interest in shooting. I took a REAL interest in shooting when at 17 I began taking tennis lessons and photographed a lovely girl named Becky on the court. I was eventually crushed that she had her eyes on the tennis instructor, but I learned that I loved photographing people.
I couldn’t wait to see what the images turned out to be: would it look like my mind’s eye? Or like something else altogether? I was ecstatic when the 1 - Hour photo lab concept came around many years later since it gave me the opportunity to learn lighting through experimentation. Lots of it, and it cost a fortune at 1 Hour prices!
Through word of mouth I began freelance shooting for friends, portraits and weddings. I bought an old twin lens Mamiya C330 and handlebar flash and learned how to work with people, posing, lighting and all the technicalities of trying to run my own business and not lose money on the deal. I was traveling for McDonnell Douglas at the time so I photographed people in Maryland and Arizona when my job took me there.
Since then, I’ve been a semi-professional photographer on and off taking some time out to raise my beautiful daughter (who as you can imagine HATES being photographed now, but I have LOTS of beautiful shots she’ll like someday).
What makes me do this over and over is the feeling I get from the person I photograph when he or she truly believes they are beautiful. I’ll never forget an event I did where I setup a background and props for a line of guests to be photographed, and there were hundreds of couples portraits I shot that day. One girl called me up to tell me that for the first time ever (she was crying at the time) she saw herself as pretty and not ugly and would I send her some more portraits? I went back and looked at this image and found her to be one of the “solo” guests, a slim, somewhat plain and shy-looking girl.
I loved making her feel good about herself and hope to get that feeling every single day of my life.
Since then, I’ve done many different types of photography; glamour, commercial/product, underwater, and soon to do aerial work. My work has been featured in websites, print catalogs, advertisements, tradeshows and newspapers. I hope that before I move to the Great Beyond, I have done every kind of photography at least once to the point of being competent. I might have to skip out Forensics, but not because I’m squeamish…they don’t let non-officials go doing that sort of work!