Beginnings

You have to go back to Christmas 1974. We were living on the east side of Tacoma. Money was tight, but Mom always made Christmas special. At the time, my Grandmother was putting me through Charles Wright Academy and they had a darkroom. I wanted a camera. The summer before I had spent my time earning money selling subscriptions to the Seattle PI. I had saved up $100 dollars towards a 35mm camera. I had a dream of seeing the world through a lens.

On Christmas morning, I rushed out and found a series of boxes. In each were the makings of a hobby that follows me to this day. It was a Minolta SRT101, and I was in love for the very first time. I can remember waking up each morning for weeks and picking it up just to make sure it was real. I would use that camera until 1988, shooting thousands of rolls of film.

At Charles Wright Academy I was lucky to have access to the darkroom, and an excellent guide/mentor in Art Bacon who taught me the skills. I recently reconnected to him and have started back into Black & White due to my experiments in digital B&W. One of my future goals is to explore Infrared.

The world as seen through my lens