Country: United States 🇺🇸
In 1968, I was the only 12-year-old at a New England summer camp with a subscription to the Boston Herald newspaper. This was so I could stay current with the Boston Red Sox baseball team. There wasn’t ubiquitous media everywhere, then. It wasn’t the printed newspaper stories that most captured my attention, it was the pictures, the beginning of a life-long interest in photography.
Around the same time I discovered Life and Look magazines, and so it went on from there.
When I was 16, my father had a poker game that included a commercial and society photographer in Palm Beach, Florida. A summer job in his small, barely surviving photo studio resulted. I learned the craft of the darkroom and began seeing images more critically. My employer wasn’t anything close to an “artist”. He was strictly a businessman trying to pay the bills. But, he hired occasional free-lancers who were more interested in the image for it’s own sake and the personal experiences and enrichment of pursuing photography. They let me borrow equipment and encouraged my interest.
While pursuing a degree in Broadcast Journalism at The University of Florida, I minored in fine art and took classes with internationally known photographer/darkroom wizard Jerry Uelsmann. This was a blending of two primary interests- writing and photography, words and pictures. I found that photography, like writing/reporting, was a ticket to experiences and visions others did not have, or did not examine.
Upon graduation I interviewed with some small newspaper photography editors, but it was Television that opened the door first. That became my 30-year career as a reporter for local TV stations around the U.S. and as a national correspondent with NBC and CBS Networks. But, the still image never ceased to fascinate me. I always carried at least a small pocket camera with me on assignment.
Some years ago I left TV news and became a free-lance video producer and shooter, occasionally incorporating still photography into my work.
From the beginning, my photography subject matter has been diverse - you could say undisciplined- against the advice of some gallery owners who showed my work in earlier years. They wanted more predictable consistency in my subject matter and technique. They would encourage the photographer to focus only on landscapes, or street photography, or environmental portraits. But, such restrictions were contrary to how I enjoyed photography as a lifestyle, not a marketing plan.
Then, just a few years ago, a drone was given to me by a generous wife who had put up with my wandering and habitual searching for decades and thought I should finally update with the times.
I am embarrassingly clumsy with the technological aspects of operating the drone. But I found that approaching it as a just another kind of camera is exciting... like learning to “see” all over again.
Around the same time I discovered Life and Look magazines, and so it went on from there.
When I was 16, my father had a poker game that included a commercial and society photographer in Palm Beach, Florida. A summer job in his small, barely surviving photo studio resulted. I learned the craft of the darkroom and began seeing images more critically. My employer wasn’t anything close to an “artist”. He was strictly a businessman trying to pay the bills. But, he hired occasional free-lancers who were more interested in the image for it’s own sake and the personal experiences and enrichment of pursuing photography. They let me borrow equipment and encouraged my interest.
While pursuing a degree in Broadcast Journalism at The University of Florida, I minored in fine art and took classes with internationally known photographer/darkroom wizard Jerry Uelsmann. This was a blending of two primary interests- writing and photography, words and pictures. I found that photography, like writing/reporting, was a ticket to experiences and visions others did not have, or did not examine.
Upon graduation I interviewed with some small newspaper photography editors, but it was Television that opened the door first. That became my 30-year career as a reporter for local TV stations around the U.S. and as a national correspondent with NBC and CBS Networks. But, the still image never ceased to fascinate me. I always carried at least a small pocket camera with me on assignment.
Some years ago I left TV news and became a free-lance video producer and shooter, occasionally incorporating still photography into my work.
From the beginning, my photography subject matter has been diverse - you could say undisciplined- against the advice of some gallery owners who showed my work in earlier years. They wanted more predictable consistency in my subject matter and technique. They would encourage the photographer to focus only on landscapes, or street photography, or environmental portraits. But, such restrictions were contrary to how I enjoyed photography as a lifestyle, not a marketing plan.
Then, just a few years ago, a drone was given to me by a generous wife who had put up with my wandering and habitual searching for decades and thought I should finally update with the times.
I am embarrassingly clumsy with the technological aspects of operating the drone. But I found that approaching it as a just another kind of camera is exciting... like learning to “see” all over again.