One of the strongest childhood memory I have is when I was in the summer after second grade. At the time I was spending a lot of time in the pool so it was just a matter of time before I got around to diving off the high board. I am not sure why I decided that was the day but I am fairly sure that a lot thought did not go into my decision.

My memory actually begins as I climbed the latter. When your height is measured in inches, not feet, the climb seemed to take a long time. Upon reaching the heavens where the high board lived, I walked to the end and looked down. I have always preferred diving over jumping for some reason. In this case, as I dove I could see the web of pipes and the ladder on the way down. In that brief moment I was fascinated. Then I hit the water.

I did not fully understand the power or the meaning of this memory for quite some time.

When I reached high school, my father realized I was not destined to be a Rhodes Scholar. His Plan B was to “suggest” I look into becoming a student photographer for the local newspaper. When I inquired about the position l learned newspaper they did use student photographers for high school sports. The strict qualifications were a modicum of photographic talent and a reliable car, not particularly in that order. Relying on my car, I secured a position with the paper.

As it turned out the paper did not have a formal training program. For the technical side of things I would shadow the staff photographers and do what they did. The creative skills I would need to learn as I went.

After a few months I showed enough progress to be aloud to take on some low risk general assignments. It was the turning point where I realized I needed to add more people skills and creativity to my technical knowledge which was the real challenge and the real fun of journalism.

I was blessed to have met some remarkable people along the way. Some were famous but more often they were my neighbors that had some special talent or remarkable story to tell. Thankfully they were also the ones who trusted a green teenager to get their story right.

By my senior year of highschool, I was doing well enough to take any assignments. Sometimes ignorance true is bliss so I went where they sent me and love every moment.

After high school I picked up assignments while attending Wright State University and then Ohio University.

In time, it became apparent that newspapers were facing mounting costs while advertising revenue was being dramatically affected by the competition from television. The future of print journalism beginning to bleak. It had me seriously questioning my career direction.

On a lark I went with a friend to a job interview for a bartender position in a collage bar. Somehow I was hired and within a few months was managing the business while drawing on some of the same people skills I developed in journalism. It was the beginning of my hospitality career.

It was not until years later that I began seeing mt time at the newspaper differently. looking back, I am all to aware that its not common for teenagers get the opportunity to contribute as I did. What I came to realize was I enjoyed the challenge by stepping off the cliff developing wings on the way down. I realized was a bit more competitive than I would have thought. And I liked the diversity of the assignments. But more than that I learned how I best learned. Though I cannot memorize pages of facts from a book, it turns out that I could harness my fears, relay on my instincts and be in the moment in demanding environments. And in time I gained the confidence to utilize all my skills to take meaningful pictures.

Despite not being a producing photographer for a number of years, my mind’s eye still saw the world through it’s lens. As Anne Leibovitz pointed out, visionalization is not something you can turn off once you start. So when the digital cameras were introduced it presented an opportunity to adapt my film experience to digital photography while tapping into a library of images in my mind. I was returning to an earlier time, an earlier challenge and the confidence that I could learn my way through the challenges that might arise (and they did arise).

As it turns out, digital photography with film, had its has its strong points as a learning aid. For one thing, digital can generate large quantity of images at a low cost. But creating a large quantity of images creates the daunting task of organizing, processing, and evaluating all those images to be that learning tool.

As a learning aid creating a website an effective tool. It encouraged me to give each images the attention it deserved while helping me integrate new ideas and new processes into my routine at a reasonable price.