Welcome everyone.

Thank you for reading my first post on the Action West Photography blog!

The question is, who am I?

I’m a husband to my wife, and a Dad to my 3 year old daughter, that’s first and foremost. 

I love my family and that will always come first. 

Second, I’m a photographer.  Photography is a passion of mine since I was a kid.  From taking family photos with an old 110 camera, to picking up my brothers Minolta x-700 SLR and taking photos at junior high events, and moved on to high school with a Canon AE-1program! 

I can’t begin to describe the feeling of excitement reached, when developing your own film in a stainless steel tank, handling wet film, the smell of Dektol.  Then holding the wet film strip up to the light and trying to find a gem!  Then having to anxiously wait to make a contact print, waiting the agonizingly long 10 minutes for the film to dry!  I look back fondly on those days, my beloved photography hobby was slowing evolving into a career choice. 

I learned a lot in my high school days, a few photographers who shared some of their secrets with me, gave me some pointers and some good guidance.  I remember Greg Andersen, Alan Greth, Keith Durflinger, and John Fontes who were staff photographers at the Whittier Daily News, covering the same high school sporting events as me.  They took me under their wing and shared their knowledge, and a few short years later I was shooting assignments for the Daily News as a stringer.  It was the start of my path into photojournalism.  

In College I got a taste for big time photojournalism.  I was granted access to events, that hadn’t been available to me in the past.  I was in awe, and feeling a little self conscious, I was a kid taking part in covering events, I could only dream of just a year earlier.  With mere basics for equipment that included my two camera bodies, a Canon T-90 and Canon F1 with three lenses a 24mm f2.8, a Tokina 80-200 f2.8 and a 300mm f4.0 one Vivitar 283 flash, with as much black and white film as I could carry.  I remember one of my advisors for the college paper being perturbed because I took the black and white film bulk loader with cannisters on assignment!  I carried all this in an old beat up Domke camera bag.  Here I was this kid (20), a fully  credentialed photographer for Nelson Mandela’s visit to the U.S., it was history in the making, and I was there to witness and record it, for the Rio Hondo College Newspaper, El Paisano!  I was rubbing shoulders with David Burnett, Founder of Contact Press Images, David and Peter Turnley Pulitzer Prize winners, fresh off of their coverage of Tiannamen Square, and many other big name photographers! 

I went on to cover a couple of Presidential visits to the Southern California area, I also covered one of the most highly contested Gubernatorial races in California history, when Pete Wilson was elected Governor, a lot of experience for a 21 year old!  I was winning awards at Journalism conferences, JACC (Journalism Association of Community Colleges) where I was Junior College Photographer of the Year back to back years.  I was confident, some would say cocky, my name was getting out there.  Finally some freelance assignments were starting to trickle in.  I getting ready to transfer to Cal State Long Beach, I was on a good path.

A year later in the Summer of 1991 one of my dreams came true, I was selected to participate in the Sports Photography Workshop.  My portfolio at the time was chosen amongst hundreds of other student photographers as only 10 students allowed to participate!  I was photographing the U.S. Olympic Festival next to Sports Illustrated staff photographers Heinz Kluetmeier, Peter Read Miller, John W. McDonough, Ron Modra, Rich Clarkson, Bill Eppridge, Richard Mackson, and Jim Gund.

I was again rubbing shoulders with the best in the industry, I thought I had arrived!  I became a huge fan of Heinz Kluetmeier, after seeing his presentation and falling in love with remote photography!  I couldn’t wait to set up my first remote camera! 

I thought I was holding my own with the other shooters, producing some good images the first few days.  Until the morning that John McDonough came looking over my shoulder reviewing my take from the previous day.  I showed him what I thought were my best images from the day, which totaled about 8 images from the 20+ rolls I had taken.  He took one slide after the other and said, background, exposure, bad crop, no, no, no, no, that one’s a possibility, but probably not useable.   He had taken my best work of the day, and whittled it down to one “Possible” image, that was probably unusable!  I was humbled, my confidence was shaken, and again I was feeling a little self conscious.  I went on to make some better images during that week, taking the feedback Mr. McDonough and the other instructors gave and applying it.  But i’ll never forget the lesson that was taught to me by Mr. McDonough, you have to be a your own tough editor, you have to be able to look beyond your own personal likes, you have to be able to take feedback, you have to apply what you learn.   

I continued to work stringer, freelance assignments.  Then in early 1993, amidst a Presidential transition, the recession officially took hold, no one was hiring, very few publications were accepting freelance work, budgets were cut back, staff positions were eliminated at many publications.  Some of the agencies I aspired to work for Duomo, Allsport were bought out, It felt like the end was near.  Is this now sounding oddly familiar to present times?  Unfortunately this hit just as I was graduating from Cal State University Long Beach, with my Photojournalism degree. 

I was forced to take a retail job at a Camera Store/Mini-Lab, in order to stay afloat, pay the bills, and survive!  I stopped shooting for while.  Fortunately I had paid enough attention, and I had earned my Bachelors Degree in Photography/Photojournalism and had a knowledge of photofinishing that I could rely on and put to use.  I worked retail, and tried to shoot as much as I could.  Unfortunately I didn’t enough to keep up with the industry to maintain the level of access I had enjoyed just a year or two earlier.  I eventually moved on to a bigger retail establishment as a Lab Manager, that offered better pay, better hours, better benefits, and a rock solid foundation, that gave me additional freedom to both shoot on the side and make a decent living for me and my family.  I’m still there and I continue to do both.

Fast forward 17 years and I’m still slowly building my empire.  I’m still honing my chosen craft.  My career has taken a slightly different course than originally intended, but I don’t think I’m not too far off.  Just a little delayed.  Family, finances, industry changes, and at times my lack of self motivation and vision were factors in me deviating from my original path.  That being the case, I still try and shoot as much as possible, and make as many images as possible to keep a sharp eye.

So here I am, a freelance photographer in Southern California.  Nothing has changed, I’m still passionate about my chosen craft.  Photography is my passion, and that feeling of excitement, watching an image appear on a piece of photographic paper in a darkroom developing tray hasn’t gone away.  It’s just evolved into me hitting the playback button on the back of my digital camera (AKA-Chimping) and re-living the image that I just captured!  The feeling of excitement hasn’t changed, it’s just as gratifying as it was before, only a little quicker!