Projects

A Dubious Beginning

My passion was born from the purchase of a Pentax K1000 for $40 in 1982 from a guy with a dubious source. That purchase, dubious or not, was born from a youth influenced by a lifetime (14 years worth at least) of memories from my grandfather's semi-annual slide shows of his award winning photography. To say he may have influenced me a little would be an understatement. He captured the Oregon coast and rural back country in ways that made it seem mystical and unreachable. From infrared farm houses to stunningly detailed images of birds - lots of birds. My own photography started with pictures of my cat. Then, as all things do when you'e 14, I moved on to other interests and my Pentax K1000 went into hibernation for 16 years. Images from the Archives are from those first few years when my passion came out of hibernation. I discovered the dark room at the Harvey Milk Recreation Center after a few classes at City College and spent more than a few free Saturdays in seclusion with a few other die-hard film holdouts; squinting into the defused San Francisco daylight as I re-emerged from 4 hours in semi-darkness. I experimented with medium format for the Architecture series commissioned by the Pacific Heights Coldwell Banker office in 2008. The Bay Trail Project motivated me to go fully digital and, aside from the Architecture project and Black and White archives, all of my images were shot with my Nikon digital SLR.