In my junior year in high school I become a highschool sports photographer for the local newspaper. The qualifications for the position were having a modicum of photographic talent and a reliable car, not particularly in that order.

The paper did not have a formal training program so I would shadow the staff photographers for the technical aspects while the creative aspects would come with time (hopefully). But to their credit, the newspapers’ motivational model more than made up for spotty training. If your photographs were published, you get paid. In time I showed enough progress that I began taking some general assignments based on a high tolerance for ambiguity and the ability to quickly establish productive relationships with subjects.

Early on I was fortunate to meet some remarkable people. Some were famous but more often they were neighbors and townspeople who possessed a special talent or remarkable story to tell. Thankfully they were the ones who trusted a green teenage photographer to get their story right. In time the training wheels came off and I was offered a wider range of subjects.

After high school I picked up assignments for the paper on occasion while attending Wright State University and then Ohio University where I became a photography major.

During an extended internship with the newspaper in 1977, it became apparent that newspapers were facing some serious challenges. Production costs were rising while advertising revenue was being dramatically affected by the competition from television. The future of print journalism was beginning to look bleak and had me seriously questioning my career choice.

On a lark, I went to a job interview for a bartender position in a collage bar. Somehow I was hired and within a few months was the manager. Drawing on some of the same people skills I developed in journalism I began my hospitality career.

Despite not being a producing photographer for some time, I had continued to visualize and seeing in pictures. So when the digital cameras were introduced, it presented an opportunity to adapt my film and visualization to digital photography.

This website provides me the ability study my photographs in depth while responding to and incorporating the new digital technology.