My interest in photography started in about 1997 right after I moved back to Pennsylvania, from Memphis. I was working a part time job at a grocery store and barely making enough money to get by. One day I saw an ad for a correspondence school and I thought what the hell it beats what I'm doing now. So I gave them a call to see what they had to offer. I guess I was looking for ANYTHING to give me some skills to get out of that grocery store. The school had courses available in things like Gun Repair, Locksmithing, and bookkeeping, and a bunch of others, few of which interested to me. I gave then a call but wasn't intereted in most of what they had to offer until the girl I was talking to mentioned photography. That's pretty much where it all started. I signed up, got my course materials in the mail and started studying my ass off. I was still struggling so I did some research on cameras that I could afford and I came across the Pentax K1000. In my research I learned that the K100o was one of the best learning cameras and even better it was budget friendly. I also learned it was the camera a lot of pros honed their chops on. So I picked one up at my local camera shop for around $100 and just started shooting. I started taking photos everywhere I could and I eventually built up a good sized catalog. I'm a traveler by nature so I didn't stay in PA very long. Late 1998 I ended up in New Orleans while hitching to San Francisco to go to art school. But there was something about that city that kept me there. Everywhere I looked there was inspiration, the music, the art, the culture, the architecture, the food, New Orleans was a photographers dream. I got a job working as a door man at a bar in the French Quarter and I loved it. I was 23, I was getting paid to hang out at a bar and meet people. I bought my first automatic SLR (Nikon N60) with the money I made after my first Mari Gras. Not long after that I started getting paid gigs. It started with some musicians I'd met in The Quarter, then I started getting approached by the local strippers to shoot portfolios for them. Over the years photography has pretty much been my passion. Even when I went through rough times and was forced to sell my camera to survive. The thing I love about photography is that it helped me truly see and appreciate the world around me. It also helped me to meet and become friends with some really amazing people. So as a tribute to my first paying photography gig, The Photo Of The Day is one of my very early (not my best) works for an old friend of mine, a New Orleans musician named John Autin.
You can check out John's music here. If you like what you hear pick up one of his CD's
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