Photography
I started taking pictures when my dad, Ed, took up photography. I was maybe ten or eleven years old. I enjoyed taking pictures, and I was inspired by the likes of Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange. I wanted to make beautiful, meaningful photos like they had. I wanted to show the world the way I saw it, or maybe just as the world could be seen...
Anyway, film was expensive, as were chemicals and printing paper. Dad let me experiment anyway. I read the photography magazines he subscribed to. By high school, I volunteered for yearbook and the student newspaper. About halfway through sophomore year, I realized that "taking pictures" was mostly about lining people up and asking them to smile. There really wasn't any room for creativity in that.
So I pretty much stopped taking pictures for several years. I really didn't resume until my senior year at the University of Illinois, when as a part of my agricultural communications program I was required to take a photography course. At the same time, I was working at the Daily Illini student newspaper, managing the darkroom, and after the student staff went on strike for some reason and quit en masse, I got a month or so as a news photographer. I learned a good deal in a short time.
That summer, I got hired for my first real professional job, as a reporter and photographer for Mid-Illinois Newspapers, the publishers of the Mattoon Journal Gazette and Charleston Times-Courier. In a time of recession when some of the much more experienced (and talented) reporters and photographers that I knew did not find employment right away, I had TWO skills--limited though they might have been at the time--but that was enough.
It was a start. And while there were lots of 'line people up and say smile' sorts of pictures, I also got to do a lot of other things as well. So I started taking pictures again for myself, to satisfy my creative side.
I estimate I've taken somewhat more than 200,000 photos in my life. I've got about 10,000 that I think are okay, and maybe 2,000 that I think are good enough to hang on someone's wall. One percent.
On these pages, you'll see some of the results, but there's no way I can put up 2,000 images!
I hope you enjoy the ones I do put up, and see the life and spirit, what I describe as the essential good humor of the universe, in all of them as I do.
I started taking pictures when my dad, Ed, took up photography. I was maybe ten or eleven years old. I enjoyed taking pictures, and I was inspired by the likes of Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange. I wanted to make beautiful, meaningful photos like they had. I wanted to show the world the way I saw it, or maybe just as the world could be seen...
Anyway, film was expensive, as were chemicals and printing paper. Dad let me experiment anyway. I read the photography magazines he subscribed to. By high school, I volunteered for yearbook and the student newspaper. About halfway through sophomore year, I realized that "taking pictures" was mostly about lining people up and asking them to smile. There really wasn't any room for creativity in that.
So I pretty much stopped taking pictures for several years. I really didn't resume until my senior year at the University of Illinois, when as a part of my agricultural communications program I was required to take a photography course. At the same time, I was working at the Daily Illini student newspaper, managing the darkroom, and after the student staff went on strike for some reason and quit en masse, I got a month or so as a news photographer. I learned a good deal in a short time.
That summer, I got hired for my first real professional job, as a reporter and photographer for Mid-Illinois Newspapers, the publishers of the Mattoon Journal Gazette and Charleston Times-Courier. In a time of recession when some of the much more experienced (and talented) reporters and photographers that I knew did not find employment right away, I had TWO skills--limited though they might have been at the time--but that was enough.
It was a start. And while there were lots of 'line people up and say smile' sorts of pictures, I also got to do a lot of other things as well. So I started taking pictures again for myself, to satisfy my creative side.
I estimate I've taken somewhat more than 200,000 photos in my life. I've got about 10,000 that I think are okay, and maybe 2,000 that I think are good enough to hang on someone's wall. One percent.
On these pages, you'll see some of the results, but there's no way I can put up 2,000 images!
I hope you enjoy the ones I do put up, and see the life and spirit, what I describe as the essential good humor of the universe, in all of them as I do.