My love of photography began as a teenager (see below). I put my camera down for many years and explored other avenues of creativity — music, creative writing, drama, and dance. I began to seriously re-explore photography as an artistic outlet in the early 2000’s. I love shooting with a digital camera and being able to edit with technology. I was never a huge fan of darkrooms.

Moving to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 2012 and having the opportunity to explore nature like never before, and with the guidance of world-class wildlife photographer Paul Joyson-Hicks I began to hone my craft again, I was able to visit national parks in Tanzania including Serengeti, Selous, Tarangire, Ngorogoro, Arusha, Mikumi, Saadani, and Ruaha; the beaches of Zanzibar and the Indian Ocean coast; before moving to Botswana and exploring the Okavango Delta, the Kalahari Desert, the Chobe River area and more, visiting surrounding countries and stopping in Kruger National Park and Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa, the stunning vistas of Cape Town, the mountain gorillas in Ruanda and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

Along the way I was able to photograph European cities of Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Warsaw.

And now full circle, coming home to California and living in the wonderful Sierra Nevada foothills, with the incredible loving support of my wife Michelle Roland, there’s no lack of beauty to capture with my lens. I’m so happy to share my art with you.

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My first camera was a Rolleiflex my Dad bought when we were stationed (USAF) in Germany in the 1950’s. I loved this camera. It used 120mm film, had a top-down viewfinder and a fixed lens which focused by physically moving the actual lens forward and backward. When looking through the viewfinder, you saw what you were looking at in black and white, and upside down. Being left-handed this made total sense to me. 

All my friends had 35mm Pentax and Minolta and NIkon cameras, with through-the-lens metering and all kinds of fancy bells and whistles. They could get 35mm film in rolls of 24 and 36, while my 120mm film was (a) more expensive and (b) only came in rolls of 12, which meant I needed to change film at least twice as often as my friends. It also meant I had to be damn careful about composing my shot, unlike today’s style which is to shoot dozens of shots at a time.

Sadly, the camera was stolen in the 1970’s. 

I miss it.