Grew up in Los Angeles and Seal Beach, California.

Graduated from Los Alamitos High School, Los Alamitos, California.

BS Mechanical Engineering from California State University at Long Beach (the 49ers).

I have been an active amateur photographer since high school and have had an avid interest in motor vehicles and equipment since about age 11.

For the most part, the cameras I used in junior and senior high schools were my mom’s Olympus Pen-D half-frame 35mm film camera and my dad’s Zeiss-Ikon Contax IIa 35mm film camera. While in College, I utilized the camera that I had purchased for myself with my summer job money. That was a Pentax Spotmatic II with its 50mm f/1.4 Pentax Takumar lens. I also borrowed my sister’s 135mm f/3.5 Takumar short telephoto lens at times.

The Olympus was equipped with its non-interchangeable 32mm f/1.9 F.Zuiko lens. The Contax was used with its ‘normal’ 5cm (50mm) f/1.5 Carl Zeiss Sonnar lens for the most part. My father also owned 35mm f/3.5 and 135mm f/3.5 Nikkor lenses by Nippon Kogaku (Nikon) for use on the Contax, but I didn’t use these for the most part for the in-school shots. Those ‘fast’ f/1.9 and f/1.5 maximum apertures on the Olympus and Contax cameras, respectively were a great advantage for inside shots which allowed 1/60 or 1/50 sec shutter speeds without the use of flash while using Kodak Plus-X Pan film (ASA125).

The film shot with the Olympus camera and some early ones with the Contax were lab-developed by commonly available photo processors of the day, such as those through the local drugstore. Eventually in order to save money, my sister and I adapted our 1st-floor bathroom into a home darkroom. It had a ventilation fan and no windows, so it was the perfect candidate! There we developed our own B&W film and made enlargements using our dad’s photo enlarger. We eventually began buying Kodak Plus-X in 100 ft. bulk rolls, loading into reusable canisters.

The many, many rolls of film that I shot and processed were cut into strips of 4 frames and placed into individual envelopes on which I wrote some identifying info. Those were placed in chronological order, segregated by the particular camera used. All of those were placed into a shoebox (really!) and lay dormant for nearly two decades at my family’s home in Seal Beach.

A few years ago, in preparation for an informal engineering school ‘reunion’ of sorts, I purchased a PlusTek 7400 laser scanner for 35mm film which also came with some tremendously useful software with which to remedy a lot of original film exposure maladies.

To protect their privacy, I have purposely left the people in my photos anonymous. However, I do remember the names of over 9 out of 10 subjects.