As a teenager, I wanted to become a guitarist. So, my parents bought me a guitar and I started to take lessons. Unfortunately, I never got far with it. I think the issue was that I didn’t have the patience for the time frame when you’re just not very good and need a lot more practice.

From previous experience with friends’ cameras and my father’s, I had also known for years that what I wanted for my high school graduation was a serious 35mm SLR. That is what my parents got me for graduation. Turns out I wasn’t so good at it in the beginning either, but unlike guitar, I enjoyed the heck out of it anyhow. Thus, I continued with it and had portfolio reviews with magazine editors and photographers when I could, and anything else I could to improve my craft. The only obstacle for a long time was the cost of film and development.

An interesting byproduct of this history is that photographing people with musical instruments is one of my favorite subjects. One of the cool things is there are so many ways to approach this. There’s the , for lack of a better word, 80’s hair band approach (I don’t currently have a digital copy of my images like this.) There’s grungy, classical, laid back casual, the door is wide open to approach musicians from many angles.

Take a closer look at my “musician images”, or my portfolio of portraits.