I received my first camera as a Christmas gift when I was nine years old (a very long time ago) and the die was cast. From that fateful Christmas morning on I have been intrigued with the photographic image. My early attempts were not award winners by any stretch of the imagination, but they kept fueling the fire within.

I learned from my many mistakes and always tried to make the next picture better than the last one. Over the years I've read just about every book, magazine, and article that I could get my hands on about photography, studying the works and techniques of the master photographers who came before me. Being completely self-taught is probably the hardest and longest route to becoming an accomplished photographer but at the same time it is the most rewarding journey I have ever undertaken. Sure, there are esoteric things that degreed photographers know that I am unaware of, but I have been down the roads they were taught to avoid, I know what's down that road and sometimes that knowledge can be used to an advantage. I am not afraid to incorporate some of the "no-no's" in my efforts to make a memorable image.

Photography for me is very emotional and very fluid. For many years I fancied myself as a landscape photographer and I only focused on making images that were of the grand scene. After a period of time I realized that I was limiting myself, putting myself in a box, and becoming merely a documentary photographer where I was attempting to record what I saw as accurately as possible without any real emotion.

While I still strive for accuracy in my images, I now let what I see inspire me to respond on an emotional level and search out just what it is in the scene that caught my attention in the first place. I no longer live in the landscape photographer box, instead I photograph whatever moves me at the time. Sometimes that is still the grand scene but other times it may be an industrial area, or a train, or a view of a city. Sometimes it's color and other times I work in black & white.

I have had colleagues comment that my work is "all over the place" and that maybe I need to specialize more, to which I respond, "Been there, done that." I don't want to get back in the box, I enjoy the freedom of not being categorized. My work is my life, it's what I see, where I go, it is the world around me.

That's who I am, that's what I am, but as I stated earlier, for me photography is fluid and in five years I may have a different perspective and my work will change again. Stay tuned.