I’ve been around photography my whole life. But it wasn’t until I turned 21 that I began to seek out answers to my own questions using the camera. That was 1991. In 1996, I’d had a few semesters of photo classes at Orange Coast College and two years of intense study at Brooks Institute of Photography.

1996 was the year that the images began to provide the answers. At least to the questions I was asking. So 1996 is the year I targeted for the beginning of this retrospective and who does a 12 year retrospective? So 1996 - 2005 it is.

I’ve been extremely fortunate to have found myself in some amazing places looking at some amazing things because I was holding a camera. The first image from this collection of work pretty much defines that experience. In the winter of 2001, I left the North American Continent for the first time in my life and landed in Prague. For a week straight, all I did was walk this incredible city with my wife, trying not to shoot all my film before I made it to Budapest.

On one particular day, walking back from Troja, we entered a particularly grungy, riverside walkway that reeked like a New York subway platform. I suddenly felt my wife gone from my side and spun around to see where she was. What I saw was the scene that follows.

I set my camera on the tripod, took a meter reading, composed the shot and made sure my wife was going to stay out of the frame. It was a pretty overcast day and the light was flat and muted, but I felt there would be enough dark shadows to provide decent contrast and began to trip the shutter release cable.

In the time it took my brain to send the synapse to my thumb to press down the plunger, and for the plunger to send it’s impulse to the shutter, a pretty cool thing happened. The clouds broke, sending a shaft of light through the windows of the walkway. As soon as the shutter closed, the light was gone.

I now make it a habit to always look behind me when I walk.

tripping.jpg