A photographer for 50 years, I shoot photos for commercial and industrial clients. I also take local assignments. I offer technical education services, typically incorporating my photos into training & marketing materials.

My primary market includes Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia-New York, and Boston. I'll also shoot 3 to 5 international assignments most years.

I guest teach photography at local high schools and community colleges (email: tom@thwphotos.com).

What I liked most to do as a kid is race rolls of Tri-X Pan 400 or Kodachrome 25 back to my darkroom, develop it, print the negatives or mount the slides, and have the damp proofs back two hours later. Clients saw their proofs same day or next day. I called that the 'Polaroid-effect.' No others photographers offered such rapid results.

I burned myself with the color slide processing chemicals so often that I left that entirely up to the labs after a year or two. I do miss my old Beseler enlarger. When I went to grade school, we still had photo processing as a class in shop, starting in the 6th grade. Mostly other pros taught me composition and lighting. I read and filed articles from Popular Photography for 12 years.

As a young lad I enjoyed assembling huge jigsaw puzzles and those 50-in-1 electronic project kits. Over time I became fascinated with schematics. I taught myself how to read and write electro-mechanical diagrams and later found side jobs in the technology sector, starting in 1979 at a circuit board factory in Santa Clara.

I enjoy using my photos and experience to create visual training manuals and presentations. Digital cameras became essential to my career in the 90's. I use Nikon D810s and the iPhone X among others now.

My first profitable assignment was photographing every business storefront on State Street, in colonial Newtown, Pennsylvania. I offered the B&W 8x10 prints to each shop owner and sold many of them. That effort taught me that my grandfather's 35mm camera could be an money-making business tool. That was 1969. I was ten years old.

My parents let me take the train to New York City at a young age (14) where I explored the faces and concrete canyons with my very own Yashica TL Electro X 35mm SLR. I was pretty lucky to have such a nice camera as a young boy. Woolco accidentally priced it wrong in a Sunday sales flyer. I bought mine new for $299. I think it was supposed to be $1,299. They had to sell it to me at the lower price because they never printed a correction or retraction. I treasured that camera, my tripod, and a few Pentax screw-mount lens' for 10 years.

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I patiently teach business people how to document their business to sell their products or services. The final product always includes a visual walk-through of the entire business process accompanied by a precise description of every process. I help IP lawyers with their technical descriptions and drawings on occasion. I teach specific camera techniques for capturing fast moving objects like products on the assembly line, using HD video or still images.

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Occasionally my photographs are used to design training manuals and marketing documentation. At other times we use images my clients capture. When the position fits, I have even been known to sign-up and create or grow an entire training department. I've done that for airlines (thus all the airport photos you see), logistics, software, telecom, software developers and a few organizations too secret to mention here!

In the 1990s a major D.C. hospital asked me to develop a plan to convert their breast cancer unit from film to digital photography. This was done to maintain patient privacy. I continued similar film-to-digital projects for large clients for more than a decade.

Before I go to factories, bases, or offices, I typically walk around a city photographing people and tourist sites. These are the images you will see most often in my photostream. 99% of the photography I do specifically for my clients is confidential and covered by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA). I cannot share those images with anyone though I continue to learn from that work myself.

Many clients hire me simply to keep them informed about the photography business. Digital imaging, wireless submission, copyrights, and Photoshop or Aperture software can be confusing to artists who just want to click the shutter release for a living. Smartphone cameras are now ubiquitous but still do not provide the required quality of digital SLR images.

Travel industry executives sometimes purchase exclusive rights to use my photographs but the rest are mine to sell, share, and enjoy. I also enjoy teaching high school or college students, and adults

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Lately the entertainment industry has captured my focus. All my other photography work can continue since Irish musicians typically perform at night!

As an photographer/imaging specialist I have been serving clients in many major U.S. and international markets since 1969. You can learn more about my services at THWPhotos.com. Thanks for listening and learning about what motivates me to make captivating images!