About Me

I have been a photographer ever since my parents gave me a Yashica TL-Electro SLR to learn on. I was 12 years old. My dad’s best friend (who lived across the street) gave me a copy of the 1947 edition of The Leica Manual. I read that book from cover to cover at least five times. I own it to this day. In high school, I joined the yearbook as a photographer. I learned to develop and print black-and-white photos.

For some reason, I decided to get a degree computer science in college. Photography took a back seat for a long time. Little did I realize that the two would be coming together in the future.

When the digital revolution came to photography, my wife and I were having our first child. We decided to get a Toshiba PDM70 point and shoot (at a whopping 3 megapixels) to record our little girl’s early days. Photographing a toddler with that camera was nigh impossible with that camera, so I upgraded to a Canon D60 (a titanic 6 megapixels). After our son was born and the kids really started to move about, the focus capabilities of that camera was outdone and I upgraded to a Canon 1D Mk II (sporting 8 megapixels). That pro level camera served me well and as my skills developed in digital image processing, I made the jump to shooting RAW exclusively.

In 2007, I realized a dream when I acquired a Leica M8. I had always dreamed of owning a Leica ever since I got that copy of the Leica Manual. The dream was not to last, however, as I started to shoot professionally in 2008 and had to trade my Leica M8 for Nikon gear I could get paying gigs with. I currently shoot with Nikon equipment (D700 primary with D300 backup) specializing in stagecraft photography. I am branching out into fine art and landscapes as well. I am in the planning stages of converting my garage into a full studio along with moving up to medium format digital for the fine art and landscape/architectural work.

This fall I will be teaching photography at Conchita Espinosa Academy’s Conservatory of the Arts. The class is open to students of the school, alumni, and adults. for more information or to enroll, surf over to CEA’s website.