When I was about 10, I was given a Brownie Reflex camera as a present. I took pictures of everything, mostly family and friends, and the neighborhood where I lived. I liked it, and I liked the pictures – I still have some. It’s nice now to see how we looked and lived in our childhoods.
I bought a used Rolleiflex when I was rwenty and used that camera for thirty years. I bought a Hasselblad after that and used it for years – that camera was beautiful – it just felt right in my hands and did beautiful work. I began to do my own darkroom printing sometime in there.
I switched to digital about fifteen years ago when it came to the point of being easier, more flexible, and capable than film, at least for me. So I suppose you could say that I’ve been a photographer my whole life
I moved to Santa Fe from Key West with my wife twenty-five years ago. What a gift to live in the American West. If you’ve been here for a time or live here, you know what I mean. It’s an artist’s dream. There’s a picture, a painting, a photograph everywhere. The mountains, the deserts, the ocean, glaciers, rivers, forests, snow, sand, and rocks. The biggest sky you’ve ever seen. And the wonderful light. It’s all around you. I drove all over the West for years, sometimes alone, sometimes not. Sometimes with a destination, sometimes not. And then I’d do it again. And again.
There are cities and towns in the West, some large, many small. But mostly, there are vast open spaces – even now. No people, no buildings, and silence. It looks and sounds like it always did. It’s a place to be alone and with an easel or a sketchpad or a camera.