I took apart a camera – for the first time – when I was in grade school.

My parents understood that I was a curious kid, and my dad encouraged it. I blame it on my first reference books. They had cut-out diagrams of mechanical objects. It made me want to disassemble things.

Whenever an appliance or electronic object broke down, they were offered up to me as a sacrifice to my intellectual furtherance. I’d grab a screwdriver and sit crossed-legged on the floor, impatient to find out what was under the cover. There were things to be learned, concepts to be gleaned.

In the process, I repaired a toaster early on . I learned that most electronic motors just needed to be thoroughly cleaned and then oiled. I started to buy electronic kits. -And then I ran across the camera.

It was my grandmother’s Instamatic, and it was surprisingly simple. Annoyingly simple. I had hoped to find something inside that would explain all of the cool images that I saw in my grandmother’s issues of National Geographic. Instead, I just found a simple shutter and a piece of glass that projected an upside down image onto the film plane. It wasn’t until years later that I would understand that the magic lay in the film, and the photographer’s eye.

My first camera was horribly disappointing to me. I couldn’t adjust anything. I didn’t know what selective focus was, but I knew that my camera didn’t have it. Around that time the Sears Catalog started featuring detailed pages on the 35mm cameras that they were selling. In order to promote the cameras, the catalog explained the features that the cameras had. It was through a Sears catalog that I started to understand aperature, shutter speeds, ISO, and electronic exposure.

This is literally the first photo that I had ever taken with a 35mm camera.

So… why am I telling you all of this, in my first blog on photography?

A few things have happened since then… things that I never saw coming.

I earned a Bachelor’s degree in photography. At my college, I was a teaching assistant; first for computers, and then for photography. I was sought after for my knowledge in both.

I interned at Playboy – during my senior year – in one long surreal experience.

I worked for a craft company photographing their products. I contracted with an auction house to photograph amazing objects of art, including a Tiffany lamp, a $75,000 painting, and ceramic sculptures that were credited to Picasso. And I photographed people. Because what I really wanted to do, was photograph people.

As I started to get better, friends asked me to photograph them. Some were for headshots, others nude and semi-nude. I began to understand that I had a genuine talent for photographing people.

This blog is to share some of those stories. At least the ones that can be shared. -And here’s where I have to offer this disclaimer:
You will not hear all of my stories.

When I photograph people, I have to earn their trust. A great portrait photographer is part psychologist. We know how to make our clients completely relaxed in front of us. Part of that is to let them know that their secrets are safe with us. That they can tell us anything. That we won’t share their fears with everyone else.

Having said that? There’s still a lot I can tell you about. And there are a lot of images that I can share, with a story behind each one.