Life

I made this photograph of Ann in 2011 as she was retiring. While I too had Ann as a junior English teacher, strangely it is not what I remember about her. You see, I was fortunate to spend a few days with Ann every year since my graduation from Chatham in 1984. I stayed with her up until 2011 in her cute little home at the bottom of the hill in Chatham, Virginia. Each night after a day of my graduation photography and her end of the year grades, we would retire to her living room to chat about school news,…

Lindia is a friend and neighbor. We have gotten to know each other while sharing a walking group on Mondays and our daughters play together. Up here in our close-knit community of Pollock Pines, when someone is struggling, we all feel it and gather to do whatever it is we can do to help. So, when I learned that Lindia had been diagnosed with breast cancer, I immediately knew it was time to schedule a shoot – some time to capture her fighting spirit and the love and support of her family as she begins treatment. I originally had in…

Over the holidays last year, my office assistant, Rita’s, son, Ricky, built bottle cap snowmen and raised $2,300 for a wonderful local family.  You see, Shawna Huckaby’s eldest son, Ben, was diagnosed with cancer in July of last year and they have spent the best part of the last year undergoing treatments to fight it. Ben was supposed to be in Ricky’s class but has been unable to attend school due to the possibility of contracting a virus. This is a small community and when someone is in-need, people rally together. For my part, I offered the family a shoot last…

You may have heard me mention the name Ashlynn in countless posts past but this is the first time you’ll have ever seen her in front of the camera, well, not including her senior photographs that I captured several years back. Ashlynn is my assistant and just one of the sweetest girls I know. This past summer, Ashlynn’s boyfriend, Sam, left for college while Ashlynn stayed behind here in California. Long distance relationships are hard at the best of times but, if you can remember the raw intensity of your first love, you can probably get some measure of how…

I’ve been taking photographs since the age of 10 starting with a 110 instamatic camera, 24 photos per roll. In my post college and San Francisco days I embarked into a career as a recording engineering for about 13 years, even built a fairly successful one, Dance Home Sound, in an empty loft in Emeryville. I remember asking my Dad if he would loan me some money for the studio- to help get it going. Certainly, if he had been open to this idea (which he wasn’t), it would have required some sort of chart and analysis on what the…