Life Outside of Photography
I was born and still live in Northern New Jersey. I’ve always been a fierce defender of NJ and what I consider to be one of the greatest places to live. My home is in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains near many woodlands, lakes and rivers. Within an hour or so in every direction of the compass I can be in open farm lands, the Jersey Shore or New York City.
I have two wonderful daughters & an amazing wife.
My wife and I are avid hikers and we can be found most weekends hiking on a new trail we try to find every time.
On vacations we enjoy exploring one of our wonderful National Parks.
My passion for photography began to kick in when I started photographing my daughters in sports. In their early years they tried different sports but my oldest settled in on softball and my youngest chose soccer. I suppose I was lucky that they chose outdoor sports so I wasn’t challenged early on by awful school gym lighting. My early shots were fairly terrible as I did not yet own a camera that was really capable of freezing the action in good detail. My first serious upgrade was to buy a Canon 70D which was considered a “prosumer” camera but to this day I really appreciate just how capable that camera was. My next best gear upgrade was getting the Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens which is still my favorite lens today for sports, airshows and portrait images. With the 70D and the 70-200mm lens I was beginning to capture really nice images and freezing the action I wanted. The next greatest “gear” upgrade wasn’t really gear at all but installing Adobe Lightroom on my computer. This is when things really began to change. I became more and more fascinated by what I could do with my images. One day I went out for a walk with my daughter around the neighborhood just after it rained and we came upon a dragon fly drying itself out on a dead flower so I could really set up the shot. It was the first time I started considering what else I could do with my camera outside of my daughters sports and family photos. To this day it’s still one of my favorite images and I began going out to find more things to shoot. That lead to more and more hikes. As a naturally anxious person whose job involved interacting with new people all day, every day, I realized that I was never more at peace than when I was alone in the woods with my camera.
The camera taught me something more. It taught me to not just walk through nature but to become hyper aware of my surroundings, stopping to look at every thing, every detail, in every direction. Composition became an obsession at this time as I learned more and more from great landscape photographers like Thomas Heaton, Mark Denney and Gary Gough. I began transitioning from taking snap shots to a becoming a photographer. I began using ND filters, tripods and trying different perspectives and camera orientations. I was learning how to find natural compositions and realizing that sometimes the best image is behind you. As I progressed I realized that the greatest gift the camera gave me was not my joy in taking the shot or rushing back to edit, which I love just about as much as taking the photos. The greatest gift photography gave me was to really notice everything around me, to slow down and be truly present in that moment.
My Photography Journey
My interest in photography began at a young age when my father was the President of the New Jersey Art Directors Club and also the Art Director for Vista Magazine, a travel magazine with great landscape photos from around the country. (I named my photography business in honor of his accomplishments)
When I was 15yrs old my dad handed down to me his Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic film camera and I was off shooting my first images. As a young adult, buying film and processing images were expensive so it taught me to make sure the image in the view finder was worth pressing the shutter button for. When I began having children of my own, digital cameras were just becoming popular and I was exited to get my first Canon (12.1 mega pixel) Powershot SX230 HS to capture memories of my daughters. When they began playing sports I needed to upgrade my gear and chose to stay in the Canon camera family and bought a Canon 70D. Today I enjoy shooting with a Canon R7 mirrorless camera and chose to stay with the APSC format for the extra reach and a camera that also gave me the shutter speed, megapixels and features I wanted for my style of shooting. I primarily focus my lens on landscapes but I also enjoy creative images and have a serious passion for airshow photography!
My Photographic Evolution & Where Photography Took Me…
