The History of Me.

I've been asked more times than I can count how I got started in photography.  And I can't remember just how it was that I ended up with my first camera at 8, did I ask for it, did my parents just think I would like it?--I just know that opening that box at Christmas was AH-mazing.  And from that moment on, I have called myself a photographer.

I got into a darkroom for the first time in middle school--and couldn't get enough printing (and experimenting!) time.  In high school, I shot for the yearbook, loving assignments that got me up early to shoot the surf team or out late at a baseball game.  It allowed me to roam in and out of every group in the school and chat up just about anyone.

My last year of high school found me working as an intern for a local portrait and wedding photographer and when my internship ended, I was offered a real paying job that took me through my first two years of college.  It was there that I started to learn a little about the business of photography, lighting, posing and building a loyal clientele.

When I left to go the University of Arizona, I began working for a very large and busy wedding and portrait photographer.  Here, I learned a lot more about business and sales.  And on the lighting side, I learned all I could from another photographer working for the studio, who is still one of my close friends.  A friend gave me a darkroom setup he found at a garage sale, and when I wasn't in the darkroom at school, I was in my darkroom at home.  My favorite darkroom memory:  printing a monster mural print (a self portrait with a friend), rolling and unrolling it through the developer, wash and fixer and proudly hanging it to dry.  My love of creating in the darkroom still holds true today, in my digital darkroom, but I do miss the smell of the chemicals.

My education in college taught me about the history of my craft and how other photographers and artists saw and created.  And as much as I complained that I ONLY wanted to take photography classes, from drawing the models in drawing class to melting silver to make jewelry to oil painting to graphic design classes, they all made me into the multi-dimensional artist that I am, still seeking to create.

Along the way, this path has led me straight, (straight, via switchbacks and turns!) to today.  And I've finally realized that it takes the sum of the parts to make the whole.  And I'm still working on that.