I remember my first camera — an old school Kodak Instamatic X-15 (you can pick one up on eBay for about $2). Film came in a little plastic cartridge and included 12 exposures. Since processing and printing were expensive — especially for an 8-year-old — it was on you to make the most of each image. There was nothing worse than the look on your parent’s face when they paid to have a roll of film developed and half the shots were underexposed, out of focus, or an abstract of the floor because you’d mistakenly clicked the shutter.
But I must have shown some promise, because a few years later they bought me an SLR. I shot black and white mostly, because by then my dad had set up a darkroom in our basement and because the film and processing were cheaper. I shot with that camera into my 30s, but life got in the way. I had a child who wouldn’t sit still, I started working as a writer, and things got away from me.
Then about 18 years ago I got my hands on a very early digital camera. It was pretty rudimentary — a half-megapixel sensor and no controls — but to me it was intriguing. Now all of the sudden every shot not only provided immediate gratification, it also became a learning experience. I played with a few point-and-shoot digital cameras, eventually getting my first DSLR about 10 years ago. By then I was hooked.
About this time I started traveling extensively, and a succession of progressively more sophisticated DSLRs and lenses accompanied me on every trip. The hope with my pictures is to do more than capture a memory, it’s to safeguard a moment. I want you to wish you were there to see what I saw, but I also want you to feel like you were in some small way, whether it’s something chilling like a lion feeding on a zebra or a summer sunset. I think of it as the art of being there.
I also hope that my images make you think, or at least imagine. Each image captures a very brief moment in time — less than a thousandth of a second in some cases. I want you to wonder what happened in the seconds immediately after, and what happened immediately before.
I hope you enjoy what I’ve captured as much as I’ve enjoyed experiencing it in real time.