Looking Toward 2026: Reflecting On Where I started

My first, and favorite, model:: my sister Valerie, 1981.

Looking toward 2026, I’ve been thinking a lot about my journey as a photographer. A friend asked if I still had some photos from a session we did decades ago. When I looked up the negatives, I found that the images were taken during my very first photo class in 1980. Yes, exactly 45 years ago! Now, I’ve been scanning negatives from my first couple years as a photographer in the early 1980s, and I’ve been completely awe-struck.

The Beauty of Simplicity

On the surface, they’re compositionally interesting—every Photo 101 student learns quickly to look for shapes, angles, and balance. But what has really stopped me in my tracks is something quieter: the beauty of their simplicity.

There is so little standing between the idea and the image.

Forty-five years ago, I was exploring. I was playing. I was dragging my sister and friends out to locations with nothing more than natural light, a piece of fabric, and curiosity. There were no filters. No Photoshop. Just an impulse to create something visually compelling and honest.

Early Influences & Frozen Moments

Looking at these photographs now, I can clearly see the influences that shaped me even then—paintings, fashion magazines, the movement of fabric, the way light sculpts form. I didn’t yet have the vocabulary to name those influences, but I was responding to them instinctively.

What also strikes me about these images is how deeply they represent a moment in time. They capture Santa Cruz in the early 1980s—its New Wave energy, its youth culture, its sense of experimentation and identity. There was a creative freedom in the air then, a willingness to try things, to dress boldly, to explore who you were becoming. These photographs hold not just my beginnings as a photographer, but a cultural moment that shaped how a generation saw itself.

Coming Back to the Beginning

Today, As a studio photographer I love gadgets and gear and have way too much stuff. I see lots of photographers making magnificent digital images, creating complex lighting scenarios, etc. But what I am reminded of in these old images is the photographer I was in the beginning—and they feel like an invitation—to remember that at the heart of all the gear, all the technique, all the experience, the most powerful images often come from simplicity, curiosity, and joy.

Looking Ahead

These early photographs are a very different version of myself. But what I’m being reminded of isn’t what I lacked back then—it’s what I already had:

A sense of play and a desire to make something beautiful with what was right in front of me.

These images inspire me to get back to basics this year – to find time for creativity and to keep it simple. Because sometimes, the most powerful thing we can do as artists is return to the beginning—with everything we’ve learned, and a little more joy.

Here’s a few images from 1980-1981, during my first photo classes with the great Betty Smith.  They were all shot on film with a Ricoh camera that had a screw on 55 mm lens! Check back - as I'll be posting more soon.