I have enjoyed taking pictures for as long as I can remember. However, I never took it seriously until the fall of 1998. That August I took part in a mission trip to Ciniega de Flores, Mexico. I had never seen a landscape like the one I found in Mexico, and I tried to take as many pictures as possible. However, all I had with me was a Kodak APS point and shoot camera with a fixed wide-angle lens. I was very disappointed by the pictures I got back: small, flat, and relatively free of detail. A friend of mine was on the trip as well who acted as the trip photographer, and the image that stuck in my mind throughout the trip was of her taking pictures with an old Canon AE-1. A month later, I pilfered the lenses from my father's old Minolta SR-T 100, bought a used Minolta X-370, and started trying to take better pictures. A year later I pilfered my dad's camera as well, but that's neither here nor there.
It has been an interesting process, this learning to be a photographer. To date, I estimate that I have taken around 10,000 photographs since I bought my first SLR. Why then, you may ask, are there only a hundred or so on the website? Simple -- some photos I take just aren't that great. I would say my success ratio is improving dramatically. Case in point: right now I am in the gradual process of revisiting areas of the Southwest I first photographed three years ago. It's been very interesting so far to compare then and now. As you can see on my Southwestern page, I took a 3-week road trip in 1999 through the Four Corners region. I took about 1,700 photos during those three weeks, and I am only really pleased with the 26 or so of those that appear on the web page. Flash forward to February 2002, when I revisited Moab and the surrounding parks, and out of maybe 400 photos, I am really pleased with about the same number of photos, which also appear here on the site. Not only is that a much better success rate, the quality of my work has really improved. After three years, I'd certainly hope it would!
I am not a photographer by trade, nor do I intend to be. I am an attorney in the Army JAG corps, currently stationed at Fort Huachuca in southeastern Arizona. To be honest, I'm really not sure if I ever want to be a working photographer. Photography is a release for me, a way to express myself, a way to travel someplace else without going anywhere. I am basically afraid that turning a passion into a job would take the joy out of it. I prefer to save it as a getaway, something I can do to leave the working week behind, if only for a day or two.
So, well over three years after buying my first camera, here I am. Since then I've bought and sold far too much gear, including a Mamiya medium format camera; hiked a couple of hundred miles with backpacks crammed with gear through desert, rain, and snow; and taken thousands of photographs. They haven't all been good, to be sure, but they haven't all been bad either, and that keeps me going. I look forward to seeing more, taking better photographs, and basically enjoying life. I also look forward to the challenges ahead.
Well, that's all I have for now. As this is, after all, a photography
site, I suggest you
go look at some photos.
It's been quite a while since I updated this and other parts of my site. As far as my personal life goes, I've gotten married, left Arizona, and am now stationed in Germany after spending a year in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I've changed somewhat as a photographer as well. After being deployed with a compact digital camera, I was not of a mind to go back to film cameras. Since I had some money left over from deploment, I decided to sell the bulk of my film cameras and to buy into a digital system. I now shoot primarily with a Canon 5D full-frame digital SLR, and rather than having 12 fixed focal length lenses, I have 6 lenses, two of which are zoom lenses that cover the bulk of my range. The order of business has become to simplify: simplify the gear, simplify the process between taking the photo and putting it on the web. I still have some of my film gear, and I'll always hang onto that, but times change, and I want to remain as adaptable as possible.
Hopefully this means that this wesite will change quickly and content will be added as soon as possible. Well, in theory, it will. In practice, my day job and day-to-day life will always need attention, and my photography will often take a back seat to more pressing issues. But I'll do the best I can.
Now go look at some photos! Seriously. You're not here to read my blathering.