My earliest childhood memories are of me making pictures of my parents in beautiful landscapes as we traveled mostly in Montana, Alberta and British Columbia. While still in grade school, I built a darkroom for developing and printing black & white images. Fortunately, a local camera salesman took an interest in me and rather than selling me photographic equipment, he instilled in me his love of photography. He was my mentor throughout high school and taught me all the basic techniques. But, more importantly, he encouraged me even when severely criticizing my work.

As I grew in photography my interest split. One leg moved from photographing people in landscapes to photographing landscapes either untouched or, at least, not visibly touched by man. The other leg focused on studio portraiture. When I went to college, not having access to a studio, I started making my portraits outside, often using old barns and farm fields in west central Illinois as my setting. I continued outdoor portraiture as much as I could while in Viet Nam. Following the war, my wife and I moved to Seattle. A dream had come true. I wanted to live near mountains so I could photograph them year ‘round. For about twenty years I concentrated on making color landscape images which I showed in galleries and restaurants in the Puget Sound area. In the early ‘90’s I started to regain my interest in making portraits. This lead to doing a number of weddings. In 1999, my wife and I decided I should open a small studio in Snohomish and do both portraiture and weddings. I did this in the Spring of 2000. In the Fall of 2002 I moved into a studio twice the size of the old one. This move is particularly important to my clients because it allows me to do things that were impossible before.

Sometimes my clients will ask if I went to school to learn photography. Yes, I did, but that isn’t where I learned photography. I went to the Art Institute of Seattle and was inspired by Frank Munson to pursue studio portraiture. I learned a great deal about studio lighting from him as well.

The learning of photography has been, and is, an on-going process. While in high school I was an assistant (apprentice) to a wedding and portrait photographer. That experience gave me a solid foundation in wedding photography that I have built on ever since. I was the black and white printer for a commercial photographer while in college. Both of these professionals taught me the technicalities of photography and how they saw the business of photography. Creating technically perfect images didn’t necessarily assure that the client would buy the image. The image’s concept had to be right for the client. If it was, the client would buy the image even if it wasn’t technically perfect. Since then, I have studied under many professional photographers in the field of nature, portrait and wedding photography.

I am a member (or have been a member) of Wedding and Portrait Photographers International, Professional Photographers of America, and the Seattle Professional Photographer’s Association.

Continuing education programs through these organizations encourage and allow me to stay abreast of the latest developments in my field and to know other photographers. Most of us work alone so its important to know local photographers that I can call upon to cover an event for me if I’m sick or injured.

Why is all this important to you? For years I’ve been asking my clients what’s important to them. And for years I’ve been getting essentially the same response from everyone. My clients want the right image. They want it done well in both concept and execution. They want it beautifully presented. And they wanted it yesterday. They have confidence in my ability to produce images they will want under whatever conditions prevail at the session. They want easily understood pricing, packaging that’s affordable and an straight forward contract. A very important part of their decision to hire me is their confidence that I will stand behind my guarantee.

This is part of what I bring to you, but there is more. Over the years I have worked under a wide variety of conditions and learned how to cope with most things. I don’t get derailed by scheduling that goes bad, by people who are late, by cameras being knocked to the ground by guests at a wedding, by a camera stopping in the middle of a shoot, or by rain on an outdoor wedding. Things happen. We have to just take a breath, maybe reorganize, and keep on truck’n.

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