April, 2017
Born and raised in NYC I am New Yorker through and through. With a desire to be a creative and artistic individual I tried every medium you can imagine only to find that I wasn't very good at any one of them! In my junior year of HS I signed up for a photography class to fulfill the required art credit I needed for graduation. A photographer friend let me borrow his Nikon F2 and I spent the school year making pictures and developing them in the school darkroom. I enjoyed it greatly and realized that I had found a medium I could create in.
Needless to say my pictures where not very good. I did hold on to the camera for a year or so after graduation and continued to make pictures. When the F2 needed to be returned I was without a camera and without a way of making images. Some years later I got my hands on an used Olympus and some books on photography and started to hone my skills. The death of that camera and lacking the resources to replace it found me in another period without photography.
On a trip to Japan with a girlfriend we pooled our resources and bought a Minolta and two lenses. I traveled home with something in the realm of 40 rolls of Tri-x and Ektar. Only saw about 100 of those prints as all the rest were destroyed in a fire when the photo processing lab I used burned to the ground. In similar fashion that relationship crashed and burned and with it went the camera.
During this photographic dry spell the popularity of point and shoot digital cameras began to surge and I found myself taking tons of "snapshots" and enjoying it greatly.
On another trip to Vancouver and a small island populated by large numbers of eagles. I found my point and shoot Canon was not up to the challenge of the fast moving birds and quickly changing light. I did not get a single usable image despite hours of shooting.
That is when I decided to acquire decent equipment and improve my technique and skills with an earnest effort.
The Nikon D50 came on the scene! My favorite photography class ever with Photo Manhattan in downtown NYC. Classes at the learning annex and SVA as well Continuing Ed programs throughout the city. And lots and lots of PRACTICE. More equipment, more classes, more practice! Rinse and repeat.
I now live on Long Island with my wife and 4 year old twins. My photography is not only my creative outlet, it is how I am documenting my life and engaging with the world around me. It will be my great second act as I approach 50 years old. It was worth the wait to get here. I struggled with my photography, but my love of the medium and my perseverance has shown me one thing. I AM an artist, I AM creative, I AM a Photographer!
--Joe