Some fun facts:

• I started taking photos when I was about ten, during the final decade of the film era, using my grandfather's rangefinder. Now I'm older than that and I shoot less film.

• I'm involved with a non-profit community theatre and shoot promotions and production documentation. But I'm not really a theatre person.

• I started out as a "practical" thinker interested in documenting events because I valued the past. Over time, without being fully conscious of it, my interest shifted almost entirely to the artistic value of the image. But I'm not naturally artistic; I have no inborn talent for it, only an instilled love and a dedication to developing in this direction. It's been a slow process.

• My personal work leans toward black & white, abstract, nature, and landscapes. My style is generally structured, balanced, and methodical.

• I use serial commas.

* I don't use Photoshop (or very nearly never). I don't replace skies, heavily retouch, or composite. What is a matter of hardline ethics to a photojournalist tends to also be a matter of principle and preference to me. My attitude is that there can be a place for those things, but they don't fit into how I understand and relate to photography as an art of omission that extracts beauty from within realities. I believe the best photography focuses on doing what the medium does better than any other, rather than forfeiting its strengths to attempt approaches and styles at which other mediums more naturally excel.

• I'm influenced by the 20th century modernist/Group f.64 photographers. You probably knew that from the last fact.

• I'm trying to be a little funny.

• I live on the central coast of California, love strong coffee, and mostly use film era German lenses on digital Fuji bodies.

• It took me ten years on Flickr before I wrote any biographical info.