ABOUT MIKE & HOW I GOT HERE

My photography is mostly about people.  I think people are the most interesting subjects in all the world.    

I am the kind of photographer who goes to the Pyramids and comes back with just a few shots of the pyramids themselves but many more shots of the people I found there.  In the upper left corner of this page there is a photo of a young girl on a donkey.  She was at the pyramids the same day I was there.

Photos to me are a slice of life, a tiny fraction of a second that existed at a certain place and time, and which forever after is both a memory and a story, a small piece of history in the lives of the people who were there.  That's the kind of photography that appeals to me.  I can find it walking down some strange street in a foreign land, in small towns and big cities,  or any event that brings people together.  

When I look back at the faces in my photos I wonder what has become of these people?  What is the girl on the donkey doing now? What about the father with his newborn son, the mother preparing her daughter for marriage, the young couple in love, the teenager about to graduate from high school, or the young girl gazing off in the distance to watch some other children playing?  I was there for that moment in each of their lives and I have made it possible for them to revisit that moment whenever they choose.  That makes me feel good about what I do.  I like that.

So now you know why I am a photographer.  

The history of Mike the photographer started way back in the late 1960's and early 1970's in Philadelphia.   Photography was an area of study in college and I worked alongside a pro for several months as his assistant; shooting weddings, shooting products for catalogues, and helping out with anything that involved camera work.  I slowly acquired all of my own professional gear and was then hired as a wedding photographer by the same studio where I had worked as an assistant.   

During the tumultuous era of the late 60's to early 70's I also loved street photography; photographing people, events, and faces, on the streets of Philadelphia.    Photography was what I loved and it looked like a photo career was in my future.    

Then there was a day of devastation.  I returned home one night and found that my apartment had been burglarized.  My photo bags were gone, along with cameras, lenses, and lights.  I had no insurance coverage.  My studio job required that I provide my own photo gear so I was also out of work.  There was simply no way to quickly replace what was gone.  So I took other non-photo jobs and then drifted away from photography altogether.  The natural environment and the outdoors have always been of interest to me, so I shifted in that direction, I got a degree in natural resource management and I worked for many years as a park manager for the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation.

Photography came back to me at the start of the digital age, in the early 90's, when I picked up a digital camera for the first time.  I was almost instantly back where I had left off and I loved the feeling of having a camera in my hand once again!  But now the darkroom was in the computer and you did not have to book "darkroom time" to process pictures.  There was now a digital darkroom.  I started back in the photography business in 1999, I learned web design, image processing, and graphics, and started to do art shows, weddings, and portraits, and a few websites from time to time.  I also taught photography for a couple of years for the community education program of a local college.  In 2007 I left Idaho State Parks and I am a full time photographer.   

I find that photography is both the same as it always was and also very different.   Photography is still all about light, all about capturing the right moment, all about the expression on someone's face, all about color or the lack of it, all about using focus and composition to direct the eye of the viewer.  At it's core, photography is still the simple process of capturing images with a lens to tell the story that the photographer wants to tell.  None of that has changed. 

But the mechanics of photography have evolved considerably.   You can now view your shots immediately on the back of the camera and you don't have to pay .50 cents for film each time you press the shutter button.  Photos can now be shared worldwide and instantly.   About 15,000 - 20,000 visitors now come to my website each month and I get emailed comments from all over the world about photos I have taken.  I answer questions and give advice for new photographers worldwide and I ask questions and take advice from many others .  None of that would have been possible back in the days of film.

When I am asked about my "style", I say it is a "blend of classic photography and photo-journalism" but that's just an attempt to put a label to it.  It is best that my pictures just speak for themselves and I stay away from labels.  

I currently do most of my work in Idaho and Washington but I can be persuaded to work about anywhere in the world.