Damn Yankee's photostream

Beginnings
My earliest memories of haunting photographs are the stark black & white and rich color pictorials by the great combat photojournalists seen in Life Magazine when I was a young child. Those astonishing and poignant wartime images captivated me and kindled a lifelong passion for all things photographic.

Discovery
When I was a lad, I sailed to England on a student ship and hitchhiked across Europe -- staying in youth hostels -- for 3-1/2 months with a vintage 35mm mechanical rangefinder camera. That formative voyage & journey of discovery and photography opened my eyes and mind to broader horizons and motivated me to pursue photographic skills and acumen to better capture images that resonate with the impact of those amazing visual and cultural experiences.

Inspirations
I took photography seminars & workshops tuition-free while on staff at Columbia University. I learned black & white darkroom techniques from Ralph Hattersley; in The Social Uses of Photography seminar, I learned the powerful realism of photojournalism, with insights from visiting photographers Diane Arbus and Ken Heyman. While on staff at NYU, I studied with Cornell Capa & guest "concerned photographers" Eddie Adams, David D. Duncan, Ron Haeberle, et al; and in a Ruth Bernhard master class at ICP, I studied aesthetic photography of still life and the female form. (Later, I studied figure sculpture with Tom Scippa.)

Refocusing
In 2004, I transitioned from 35mm film to digital cameras and now strive to crest the ever-growing learning curve of digital photography. The two foci of my photographic orbit are the powerful authenticity and realism of photojournalism, and the beautiful imagination and invention of aesthetic photography. Whatever genre, whether black & white or color, film or digital, in the end it is haunting photographs by great photographers, past and present, that always inspire me.