I began photographing in high school. My father introduced me to large format cameras (Speed Graphic, Graphic View), working in black and white. I was most inspired by large format studio images of Ted Merchant, who was the staff photographer and illustrator at my family's business. In his images, I saw the essence of the subject revealed to a depth I had never perceived before. From there, I fell in love with the work of Alfred Stieglitz, and then the landscape masters of the day, Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. As I was born and raised in California, I felt entirely at home with the quality of the light in those large format images.

I did not, however, have the patience and skill required to master the large format medium, and quickly turned to 35mm photography. The immediacy allowed by that format, along with the aspect ratio of the 35mm frame, allowed me to begin to develop my own seeing.

Until the advent of digital photography and ink-jet printing, my personal images were almost exclusively blank and white.  Digital has opened up the realm of interpretive color for me that was never before possible.