I am intrigued by the world. As an avid shortwave radio listener and amateur radio operator in my teen years, I talked, using voice and morse code, for hours with new friends from all around the world from my Cambridge, Massachusetts bedroom. Our family home received LIFE magazine weekly and National Geographic, and I pored over the pages of photographs from distant lands.

Before leaving for a two year air force radio operator assignment to Japan, my parents gave me a 35mm rangefinder camera as a going-away present. On my off duty days I wandered the streets of Tokyo and a small town in South Korea, photographing whatever struck my interest — usually daily life — without too much thought about subject composition or concern about what would later be known as privacy issues. It was an honest, pure curiosity about distant countries, cities, towns, people, and cultures that I was experiencing for the first time.

After my military discharge and while attending the University of Massachusetts in Boston, I began working for Polaroid as a technical support representative. During my years at Polaroid, I began studying both the technical and aesthetic aspects of photography. The street photography of William Klein, Henri Cartier–Bresson, along with the documentaries by Gordon Parks, slowly began to influence my own photographs. A growing social and political awareness from my military experience also helped to form a new intellectual foundation. I soon began exploring the social and political visually with a camera. But it was in 1982 that a Polaroid SX70 photograph of mine — a weather-beaten Cape Cod cottage in wintertime — was selected for a nation-wide Polaroid exhibition that began at the Clarence Kennedy Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was my fifteen minutes of fame!

I moved to San Francisco in 1988, and after a short stint in the corporate world, worked for a local camera store selling film, photographic paper, and chemicals to the Bay Area photography community. It was in San Francisco where I made many new friends and acquaintances in local photography circles, and discovered it was possible to make a reasonable living in the creative world. On days off I continued shooting film of everything and everyone — from environmental portraits of friends to a self-directed documentary project about urban barbershops in San Francisco's Fillmore neighborhood. I developed film and made prints using an old Leica enlarger in my small Nob Hill studio apartment and in the basement of Rayko on Polk Street.

When my attempt to launch a free magazine of photography and short stories failed in 1995, I retooled the magazine concept for a new publishing medium becoming popular in the Bay Area — the Internet. I bought a Macintosh computer, a "how to" book on HTML page formatting, and with the help of graphic designer friends, built my first web site — Nufoto in 1996. My earlier skills in building ham radio stations made computers, networks, and the Internet easy to learn.

Returning to Boston in 1997 I began a successful career in information technology working as a web developer for small businesses, non-profits, and in financial services. I never let my passion for photography lapse while continuing to learn new IT skills. I took workshops in portrait and documentary photography, learned the basics of digital photography and image editing, and became skilled at making prints using today’s digital imaging technology.

For the moment, I live in Oakland, California and continue to pursue my many passions that include photography, web design and development, writing, travel, cooking, music, books, making new friends, and just plain enjoying life. My curiosity about the world and people continues to thrive.