I just recently relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada after spending the past 18 years in Orange County, California. Married 15 years to my beautiful wife Pam; we have three children, one son Jordan, and two daughters, Hailey and Emily. I’m a software engineer by day and pursue photography as a hobby on the weekends and holidays.

While I have been taking snap shots most of my life, it wasn’t until the summer of 2005 when I decided I needed a new hobby, something that would get me out of the house. I was inspired to get more serious in photography after seeing some of my friend Shaun Nelson’s photographs.

I took one black & white photography class way back in high school, but my only memory of it is being locked in a pitch black room trying to get my film ready for developing. Fast-forward many years when I decided to take some adult education digital photography classes offered by our local public school district. Luckily these classes were taught by Laura Hoffman, whose own work and constant encouragement helped inspire me to make better photographs.

While I photograph many different subjects, I would have to say my main areas of interest are landscapes/scenics, woodies, temples, and infrared.

I started out shooting landscapes and scenics as I thought they would be a relativity easy subject. I quickly discovered all the hard work that goes into shooting these scenes. I’ve got a lot of hiking and cold dark mornings under my belt now and have gained an even greater appreciation for those who shoot landscapes. My “View from the Window” image was captured just after sunrise at Arches National Park after hiking ½ mile (in the dark) and then climbing up on a ledge about 20 feet off the ground. It was cold and windy but I was pleased with the final results.

View from the Window

I’ve also gained a greater appreciation of the natural world around me. Prior to picking up this hobby I would have never dreamed of spending time out in the country or back roads of places like the eastern Sierras. But now I can’t wait to go back.

Hope Valley Autumn

Another subject I accidentally got into shooting are the old wooden bodied automobiles that were manufactured from the 1910’s to 1950’s affectionately known as “woodies”. I’ve always admired these cars from afar until my wife purchased a really cool photograph of a group of woodies in the summer of 2006. My wife mentioned to the photographer that I liked woodies and he suggested I attend a woodie show coming up the next month near our home. It would be the biggest gathering of wooden bodied cars in the world.

I decided to go and planned to arrive just before sunrise. I had never done any type of automobile photography before, but when I got there, I was in heaven. Everywhere I looked there were these beautiful wooden cars. I started shooting away. I noticed the wood grain. I noticed the reflections from the very shiny painted surfaces. Everywhere I turned there was an image waiting to be captured.

Woodies Lined Up

Fast-forward a few months to December 2006 when I was shopping for a calendar for the next year. As I was looking at the available options, I thought it would be really cool to get a woodie calendar, however I couldn’t find one. Then I thought I have all of these cool photos of woodies, why not make my own. So I found an online service that would print a custom calendar of my photos. I set about getting a selection of 12 of my favorite woodie images and created the calendar. In addition to making a custom calendar for myself, I could post my design for sale to the public which I decided to do as I really liked the result. I mentioned the calendar on a woodie themed discussion group and I was happy to discover many other people were interested and actually purchased a copy of my calendar.

The response to the 2007 calendar was so great from individuals and even a couple of stores inquired about selling it so I decided to do the same for 2008. This time in order to lower the cost of the individual calendars, I decided to publish it in bulk. The result is at www.WoodiesCalendar.com and sales are going well. I do direct sales via the website and at woodie shows, it is available for sale at Amazon.com and I have a few stores stocking it on their shelves.

My woodie photographs have also been published several times, including the front cover and back cover in “Woodie Times”, a magazine published by the National Woodie Club with a distribution of about 3000 copies each month.

California Woody

Another subject of interest is temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The architecture of many of these buildings is amazing. I started with photographing ones close to my home, but as I got started, I decided I wanted to shoot more so now while planning our family vacations, I plot the locations of temples on or near our route. My collection of LDS temples can be found at www.TempleVista.com which is a link into a category and galleries hosted on my SmugMug site.

Oakland California Temple

I’ve also been playing around with infrared photography and enjoy the results I’ve achieved there, however at this time IR has been secondary to my visible light photography. I hope to spend more time with IR in the future.

I’m one who believes it’s not the equipment you have, instead it’s what you do with that equipment. With that said, I currently shoot with a Canon 30D and a couple of lenses, a Sigma 18-50mm 2.8 and a Sigma 70-300mm. I also have a Canon PowerShot Pro1 modified for full-time infrared photography. Not in my bag because it doesn’t fit, but an essential piece of photographic equipment I carry is my tripod. I have a Bogen / Manfrotto 3021BPRO tripod with 322RC2 grip ball head. I have quick release brackets attached to both cameras so I can quickly attach either to the tripod.

My next purchase will most likely be an ultra-zoom, from about 18mm on the wide end to about 200mm or more on the long end. This would make a great walk around lens and would be extremely useful in my woodie photography.

While I admire many of today’s photographers, I would have to say my biggest photographic influence is Ansel Adams. If I could end up being half as good a photographer as him I will feel I’ve succeeded in my photography goals. His work is amazing, and to think he did it all before the age of digital. Much of my inspiration for photographing in the eastern Sierra and national parks comes from Adams. John Telford’s work in photographing and documenting early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints buildings of worship has inspired my temple photography.

I signed up in July 2006 after my photography instructor, Laura, recommended SmugMug to help me build, organize and display my portfolio. I have the ability to design and host a website myself, but I decided to go with SmugMug to eliminate the hassles involved with hosting it yourself and to eliminate the hassle of dealing with products sales, credit card processing and overall customer service.

Day's End

I like the ability to customize the look and feel of the site, the ability to set my own pricing. The tech support is unbelievable. SmugMug also offers the ability to create or join communities based on specific themes. This makes it easier to find other like-minded photographers to share your photos or gain inspiration.

Prior to using SmugMug all of my photos were sitting in folders on my computer, unorganized and unseen. I took the advice of Laura and signed up for a SmugMug account, started organizing my photos and sharing them with the world. The comments I’ve received has made me a better photographer and the sales don’t hurt either.

Go for it! I have one of those motivational pictures on my desk of a basketball court that says “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” I believe that and refer to it often. No matter what kind of camera you have, get out and start shooting. The more photos you take the better the photographer you will become.