Growing up in this "place that never quite dries out" [the Pacific Northwest], I have made it past the half-century mark without breaking a leg. I got my first camera [a Kodak 'Hawkeye 44 - might still have it somewhere] at about 12 or 13. For those of you that are counting, that's about 52 some very odd years ago. Got my first SLR about 1987 and my first DSLR about 2004. Taught myself how to find my way around a darkroom in 1996, worked with many different kinds of film and paper and shot countless images - most of them throwaways until I made that decision to stop letting the people in the lab decide what sort of contrast my images should have.

One of the first toys I remember was a pretend wooden camera.

I present images that I enjoy creating as opposed to images that are meant to satisfy others above all else - there would be no point in creating works for which I have no Passion. This may disturb some, but it won't disturb me however, I am likely to be less 'prolific' on certain platforms because I know that some individuals exist only to fire weapons at differences yet offer no bounty of their own to share.

Post Script: If you are a male in the Seattle area and don't mind being photographed nude for all the world to see, I could be your man - Not independently wealthy so payment would have to be TFP, or the ever popular "Joy of the Experience"