My first knowledge of photography came from my father’s Rolleiflex. The few times I was allowed to touch it I was consistently confused by the reversed imagery in the waist level view finder. I was given a Kodak Instamatic something or other. The most prominent memory of that camera came from burning my fingers while removing the AG-1 bulbs. In college I purchased a Minolta 102. I lived less than 20 miles from Times Square, so I did a lot of street photography, using Kodak’s Tri-X or Plus X. I came to prefer the fine grain, tonal range and high contrast that was possible with Ilford’s FP4. After graduating I was recruited to teach in Alaska; the camera came with me.

I spent decades in Alaska, mostly in the bush, working in Native communities as a teacher, then principal, and finally as a district administrator. The people I served; Yup’ik, Inupiat or Gwich’in had unique needs, customs and cultural values that had to be integrated into instruction to match their learning styles. But I was also taking pictures. The people, mountains, rivers, wilderness and animals were my subject matter. In 1988 several of the images I took while working years earlier on the Kuskokwim River were published by the Alaska Geographic Society in their book about that river.

On a summer road trip, I ruined my trusty Minolta by dropping it into the Atlantic. On my way home, I stopped by NYC’s Wall Street Camera Exchange and bought a Mamiya 645. I fell in love with medium format. The images were crisp and clear. The tonal range in both color and black and white was well beyond 35mm. The bokeh produced by the 80mm f1.9 was incredible. In 1991 I entered several of my black and white prints into an Anchorage art show. One of the pictures was taken while hanging out of the open window of a C-172, composing with a waist level finder, in a 100-mph slipstream. That print took second place. Marriage to Ellen and having children changed my perspective. It was time to raise our family surrounded by family. I still have the Mamiya, but I put it away in 2001 when I left Alaska.

In Albuquerque my career continued for a few more years as a departmental administrator for APS, a private consultant, and finally a data analyst for a non-profit. I jumped back into photography when digital cameras reached the quality of the Mamiya hiding my closet, about 50 MP. It rekindled my love affair with photography. I established Fragile Light Photography to showcase my work, and by happy coincidence discovered a community of photographers in Albuquerque and the Annual New Mexico Photographic Art Show, which has been gracious enough to hang a few of my prints.