My interest in taking pictures began in junior high school when a neighbor gave me a stack of his old photography magazines. Soon after, I was borrowing my dad’s Argus camera and using Kodachrome 25 film to make slides. Gradually, through experience and knowledge gained from the many books I read, my photographic skills improved.

After completing college, I moved from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles where I was privileged to learn a great deal about artistic photography from Robert Heinneken at UCLA, and from Edmund Teske at California State University Northridge and his studio in Hollywood. I built a darkroom in my garage and started using medium format and 4 x 5 view cameras and to take black and white images of western landscapes.

Eventually, I accepted a part-time job teaching photography to Los Angeles Adult School students at all levels of ability -beginning, intermediate, and advanced. During those five years, I was lucky to work with another photography teacher who knew Ansel Adams. Consequently, I had the fortunate experience of meeting the master himself and spending an afternoon at his home in Carmel where he graciously gave us a tour of his darkroom and even critiqued our students’ prints. My involvement with the Los Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club led to my meeting another master photographer, Bruce Barnbaum, who is also known for his exquisite black and white landscape photographs.

In order to continue my self-education and to improve my skills, I have visited many museums in the western United States, where I have been inspired by the work of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Elliot Porter, Philip Hyde, Charles Cramer and many others. After moving to Mammoth Lakes in the heart of the Eastern Sierra Mountains I have taken an advanced color printing workshop at Mono Lake sponsored by the Ansel Adams Gallery and taught by Charlie Cramer, who is one of the best fine art landscape photograhers and printers in the world. I have also taken a workshop at Galen Rowell's Mountain Light Gallery in Bishop, CA. In addition, I have visited art galleries, studied the work of many contemporary photographers on the internet and collected a library of a few hundred photographic books. Many of the outstanding contemporary artists whose exceptional work I particularly admire are David Muench, Jack Dykinga, Vern Clevenger and Christopher Burkett.