My fascination with photography began when I was in grade school. I wanted a camera so I sold garden and flower seeds for the American Seed Company to earn enough money to purchase a Polaroid SX-70. I used that camera for years. I guess it intrigued me the way the current digital cameras do – in a few minutes you had a picture right before your eyes. My next camera – my first SLR camera – was a Canon A-1. After that I was hooked! I took that Canon everywhere and took pictures of everything, including many portraits of friends I knew. Pretty soon my collection of photos were filling boxes. I was always trying to create something unique. I wanted to do photography that would make people wonder “How did he do that?” I must have seemed pretty strange to them! A great deal of time was devoted to studying night photography and the effects of light and movement in the dark. I incorporated using flashlights and colored lenses to create strange and eerie effects. I was always searching for that “perfect” shot. Hard to believe nowadays one can accomplish most of those effects with a computer – guess I still believe that if at all possible do it with your camera. It just seems more “legitimate” that way.

In my high school years I bought many more Canon cameras and all kinds of filters and lenses. I spent every penny I had on new equipment. I never left home with out my camera. Every time I went to town I would buy photography books and would read anything I could get my hands on. I would process my photos and give them away to friends just to share my work with others. I can only image how much I have given away over the past 25 years! But that’s just me. I believe that each photo tells a story and if my audience can’t physically be there when I take the photo then I want them to experience it visually.

18 years ago I moved to Rapid City, located in the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota. I was in heaven. Such beauty right in my own backyard! I shot 100’s of rolls of film all the time. Weekend after weekend was spent running to beautiful Spearfish Canyon to shoot. Soon people started to notice my photos and their response was positive, so I started sell them. Big profits were never made, but it didn’t matter, I just wanted to share my work.

During the 1980’s I began working at one of the major jewelry companies in the Black Hills. I moved on to my first “modern” camera – a Canon EOS 2E. Wow! That was something! I could do double exposures right in the camera without advancing the film. I was blown away! I eventually bought another Canon EOS 2 so I could shoot film in one camera and slides in the other. A few years ago, a friend of mine told me his grandfather had some old photography gear that he’d like to sell so I agreed to meet him. As it turned out, I remembered the old guy from shooting my own senior pictures back in the day. We soon became good friends and I wound up buying all his old equipment. My good friend passed on not too long ago, but I still have all his gear and many fond memories of all the secrets of the trade that he taught me. He and his wife owned a wedding business for 30+ years. He taught me a great deal. I would drive down to Hot Springs, South Dakota with him and his wife and spend hours with them sharing their stories and ideas with me. I, myself, have been doing weddings for years now and still to this day I use many of the things he taught me. I’ll never forget him.

Today I have a dozen or more cameras ranging from a Canon that has an all metal lens (no plastic) that my uncle brought back from the service to a brand new digital Canon 10D. I still prefer film over digital. I just believe it means so much more when you do it all with the film and camera. Call me a purist.

I continue to work for the same jewelry company and I sell a great deal of my photos to my friends (I probably don’t make what I should for them!) But I would do this even if I never sold a photo, because this is and always will be my first love – to capture God’s beauty in any way I can…in a way He must see it. It’s all of our job to share God’s beauty any way we can. I have traveled all around the United States and there is so much beauty all around us. If my photos can touch just one person, then my mission and life’s goal has been accomplished.