…. And by ‘early years’, I’m not talking about my early work as a photographer, I’m talking about my actual ‘early years’.

As I mentioned, my father was in the military (the U.S. Navy to be exact). This meant that we moved often in those years. Two of my siblings and I were born in Pennsylvania (my parents home state) with my youngest brother being born in Florida. In all, we lived in Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, back to Pennsylvania while we waited to see if we were going to go to Minnesota – we didn’t, then finally;  Louisiana. That was all before I entered the 7th grade!

My father retired from the Navy during my senior year of high school, rather than take the next transfer (which would have been to California). Interestingly, my entire family still lives in Louisiana (except my brother who moved to Texas

with his family and my daughter who relocated to New York just over a year ago (as I write this).

As I mentioned there were always cameras and photographs all around me. Polaroid cameras, 110 film cameras (remember those?!), disk cameras. There was even a 120 film (medium format) camera that one of my aunts sent to me. This was back in the day when you would bring your film into almost any drug store and get it processed and ready for pick-up – usually in a few days. So, you would take photos and not know what you had for nearly a week! Quite a difference from the digital process of today. That’s just the way it was and no one knew any different.

In my youth I had no idea about true photography or even how a camera worked. All images were taken in whatever automatic mode was available and I just hoped for the best. This method led to a lot of disappointment, but that’s just the way it was.

The early adult years and all the “excitement” that comes with that story in my next

installment.

As always, thank you for visiting my new website.