I've been a student of photography for the last 25 years. I say student because you never stop learning in this amazing media.
I started with a black & white class offered at my junior high school and I was hooked. I continued my studies in High school. I attended Southern Illinois University receiving a BA in Cinema and Photography. At Southern my areas of interest focused on Fine art photography, exploring many 19th century process, experimental camera and darkroom techniques. In my senior year I studied commercial and studio photography and found way to explore blending my previous photographic experience my assignments and projects. I was very fortunate to attend the program at Southern Illinois, the professors do amazing job of preparing their students technically, aesthetically while educating them on the history and possibilities of the medium.
After school I worked as a color printer in a lab, as a portrait photographer and finally I entered the commercial field as an assistant. During my time as a freelance assistant I worked with many very talented photographers and was exposed to so many different styles of lighting and camera techniques. I came into my own as a photographer the digital revolution was being to blossom. I was fortunate to be hired by a studio that was one of the first to complete committing a completely digital workflow. In 1999, at Vertis we partnered with Phaseone a Danish company which had develop the first single shot digital back that had the similar range as color transparency film which meant that we could use this new camera for all our projects. Previous digital cameras were either 3 pass, (which meant they used 3 exposures with different filters; red, blue and green and combined the exposures to make one full color image) or they were so limited in the range and unstable; having many technical problem that they were very limited in their application. Now this technology is much more available to everyone, but using it to it’s full potential is not always so obvious.