Photography, as most people understand it, is a record of what was happening the instant the shutter was released.

I was born in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, and moved with my family to Southern California when I was 8 years old. While still in Canada I discovered my love for the outdoors. Each summer we would rent a cabin on Manitoulin Island (on the north side of lake Huron in Ontario). I would spend hours roaming the beaches looking for shells, or wandering the forests in search of frogs or the perfect birch tree to make paper.

I brought that love of the outdoors with me to California. It was at the age of 13 that I first seriously picked up a camera, and I was immediately hooked. I started by simply documenting the beauty that I saw. I would often return from these hiking trips and give slide show presentations. I remember my hiking mates seeing my pictures and saying: “Wow, that’s beautiful; where is that?” Reactions like that always made me laugh because, more often than not, the images were taken next to the campsite where we all stayed, or along the trail we walked. I just assumed that everyone saw the same things that I did.

My grandmother gifted me with all of my grandfather’s negatives and camera equipment (he was a passionate photographic hobbyist). I soon built a darkroom in my bedroom closet, was developing prints and fixing them in my bathroom sink. The square format (from my grandfather’s camera) was so freeing compared to the rectangle of a 35mm negative. The square allowed me to discover movement in the frame. It seems ironic to say that I discovered movement in a still photograph, in a split second of time, but to me the square format had no corners - it was a freeing shape. Composition played an important role (even though, at the time, I wasn’t aware of the “rules” of photography).

I continued with my passion of photography as I headed to U.C. Santa Barbara to earn my B.A. in biopsychology. During my last quarter in college I realized that becoming a doctor was not what I wanted. I wanted to do what I loved to do when I wasn’t studying, photography! So after graduating from UCSB, I enrolled at Brooks Institute of Photography and when I arrived, I knew that I was home. Classes were thrown at us at a grueling pace, but I loved every second. I stayed there for only 18 months because I soon found myself working full time as a photographer for a local Horse Whisperer. We ended up publishing a photo book together – Shy Boy, The Horse That Came In From The Wild.

After several years, I decided to pack things up and move to Palm Springs, the desert, for a new experience. Being free of the rigors of commercial photography, I was more able to concentrate on the Fine Art side of photography that I loved so much. Palm Springs is also where I met my partner Morris. We soon found ourselves in Boston, Massachusetts. My obsession there was panoramic photography, which I used to capture a whole scene instead of just a part.

In 2012 we moved to San Francisco and I immediately fell in love with the energy and beauty of the City. It was during my first year here that I created my first Impression. It was of a tree in Golden Gate Park. Using this new method, I captured not only a whole scene in space, but, also a whole scene in time. My Impressions are grounded in a love of photography and transcend the still or snapshot. I hope they convey my love of my new home, San Francisco