I was born in 1963 and grew up in central Ohio, in the pleasant little college town of Granville, watching my father take family snaps using an ancient 35mm Ansco Regent folding camera and a Polaroid Land camera. I began my own photography as a young teenager after receiving a two-lens 110-format camera as a gift from my maternal grandmother. I made many photos with this simple camera, even dabbling in black-and-white, and my love for photography and images grew. During my senior year in high school, I was a yearbook photographer using the school's 35mm SLR. My own 35mm camera eventually arrived, a high-school graduation gift from my parents, in 1981. I took many photos with this camera, yet these efforts lacked focus and vision. Following high-school, I enlisted in the Ohio Air National Guard to help pay for college. I attended the Ohio State University, first at the Newark branch campus, then at the main campus in Columbus, eventually earning a Bachelors degree in Computer Science. I no longer know why I chose to pursue computer science over a visual discipline; perhaps at the time it "seemed the thing to do". Following college, photography took a backseat to other concerns. It took the birth of my first child to re-kindle my love for photography and I discovered that the passage of time had allowed my photographic interests to sharpen. I have come to love the richness of black-and-white photography, particularly that of vintage railroad equipment and of musicians in performance. Photography remains for me a passion. As I pursue this passion I strive to refine my artistic vision, to improve my photographic skills, and to make each photograph just a little bit better than those that precede it.