mvhargan's photostream  

I work as a freelance copy editor for St. Martin's Press, but inside I am a photographer. Almost went into the business exclusively after graduating from the New York Institute of Photography when I was fresh out of Columbia University, with a degree in English. Now I have an M.A.+ all the course work for a Ph.D. in medieval literature from NYU, but my great love is still photography. I knew it instinctively when I was twelve, and family members and teachers had started pushing me toward a degree in art, but I intuitively knew my true talent was for photography, though I hsd never taken a shot.

At one point I belonged to a photography group that met in Eugene Smith's building in the flower district. He came to a show I was giving at the request of the director of the group, and while we were waiting for my time at the podium the two of us both managed to get slighly drunk on a bottle of whiskey he had brought with him. He had allowed me to use his studio downstairs to mount my photos for the show, and we had become friends there. I was just off for a hitchhiking tour though Europe, which Smith thought was very brave of me to tackle. Of course I brought my Nikon, film I had rolled myself, and a portable bag for developing film in. I learned a lot about lighting on that trip as the further south I got, the brighter the sun got. On Crete, with all the houses whitewashed and the sun beating down furiously, I had to set the camera at the lowest possible aperature opening and then hope. Some of these photos and others, closer to home, will be appearing once I finish my current project and have the time to scan some pictures into the computer.
Keep looking!