At around age 10, I picked up my dad’s old Argus camera and bought a roll Tri-X Pan from the drugstore in downtown Grayslake, Illinois…and I was hooked.

From that early age, I was a big fan of Ansel Adams and he became one of my boyhood heroes. His black and white landscape photography moved me. Most tweens and teens had posters of The Monkees or Claudia Schiffer…I had Ansel Adams posters. As a kid, I almost exclusively shot black and white, mostly because of the economics…but also because I was blessed enough to have my father help me build a darkroom in the basement of the house in Grayslake for B&W work. So I learned to “roll my own,” (film that is :) , the other stuff came later)…and I spent countless hours inhaling copious amounts of fixer.