One Photographer's Perspective

A lot of times I think back to when I got my first camera at 11 years old.  My mother had befriended a narcotics officer for the Miami Police Department.  He was doing a lot of surveillance and developing and printing his film, in his garage.  He needed help with the developing and printing.  So, when he had to baby sit me he put me to work.  I became addicted to the smell of "fixer" or was it the "developer" I don't know, the chemicals of a darkroom still give me a rush.  He bought me my first Nikon and my first Ruger 22 caliber rifle, taught me to shoot both, and to shoot well.  I started shooting with my camera right away at almost anything up until high school when I became the school photo editor.  I had my own dark room on campus.  "Yes" I am the photo geek you remember from school.  In the 11th grade I was fired!  Apparently they didn't like the photos of our cheerleaders doing kick-lines at the football games.  Bloomers still turn me on!  They were not too happy to find out that at football games I shot more of the girls in the stands than the game.  I was conflicted most of the time in high school and I was a highly sexual changed human inside of a puritanical, all boys Catholic School.  Corporal punishment became a daily event for me.  I can still describe each of the teacher's favorite paddles.  At about the same time I started to model myself and was humbled by the caliber of photographers that I was working with; Bruce Weber,  Aldo Fallai and Albert Watson to name a few.

Bruce Weber once asked me if I was interested in becoming one of his assistant.  If I wasn't married I would have done it.  Hind-sight!?! I put my camera down and just started to ask a lot of questions.  I learned more from watching these guys work than I would have ever learned from any books.  I ended up selling my Nikon while I was married to buy my ex-wife some tits, or was it the Jaguar she wanted, or the penthouse on South Beach that she wanted....I don't know...I can't remember.  About, 12 years ago I got my camera back and a little digital to boot.  Every once in a while I would get a willing victim and see if I still could take some shots.  It was fun but nothing got me excited until I shot my ex-girlfriend a few times nude.  She exudes class and sexuality without even trying.  It is her nature.  "She may have fucked me up for all girls from then on."  We took some amazingly erotic photographs.  I was hooked!  About the same time I got sober.  Over the past eight years my sobriety and my business have been priority and then, about two years ago, professional grade digital cameras became affordable.  I went for it and now...I'm addicted again, this time to photography.  (To be continued....)