I had no intention of being a photographer. I had been in the military, stationed overseas in a place with cheap prices for gadgets in the military store, and very little else in the area to spend money on. So I bought a good SLR camera and some lenses, with no idea how to use them, or what I wanted to do with them.
A year later the use became clear. My new wife wanted pretty pictures done of her, and wanted me to take them. I didn’t know how to do that, but had one great advantage: neither my wife nor I had any idea what a “good picture” looked like. So we shot and declared it good. Well, pretty good. Maybe we could make it a little better with some lights, and a better backdrop? Or another lens?
In retrospect, those first pictures were awful. Tragically bad. But not knowing that had been a boon, and in time we began to learn what quality photos looked like, and I learned how to produce them. By the time of my divorce I had begun a career as a commercial and sports photographer, and in short order had hundreds of publications to my credit.
Time moves on, and I moved on, this time to take over a New York City modeling agency, where, unsurprisingly, I specialized in modeling and fashion photography as a free service to my models. For the last ten years I have been retired as a professional photographer, and now shoot happily as an amateur, doing whatever pleases me.
I am also the author of a book on modeling: The Professional's Guide to Modeling, and am the owner and primary writer on the modeling advice website Newmodels.com
I'm always interested in new challenges and creative concepts. Routine-but-useful pictures, not so much.