Hope came up to Chicago to visit us a few months ago. Shot this as we dropped her off at the airport.

It’s been three years since the last photo was taken of these guys. New neighborhood, new city, and they still live right down the street from each other. Pretty neat to see them grow. Make sure and check out the old photo. I plan to reprint/rescan the old image.

Did I ever tell you how I got started doing photography? (You are you, in this case, and I ask all of you this because I know the collective answer is no.)

The story goes, in high school I shot video (poorly) in band all the time. In 1996 or 97 my Aunt Nancy gave me an older SLR for some reason. I think she had let me borrow her new digital camera (we’re talking one of the first compact digicams) I really enjoyed taking tons of crappy 640×480 photos with it. So I think she figured I would have an interest in the film camera. I did not.

I went to college for music, and after a year I realized I couldn’t do it for a living. Burnout. So I switched to graphic design because I had been working with web sites since 1996. Turns out I was kind of a lousy designer… at least by good designer standards. But I remember always scouring the web for images for use in projects and never being able to find anything free that was any good. I didn’t know where else to look.

My mom had Sony Mavica that recorded straight to floppy disk at the time. Huge display, but the photos were 1.3 megapixels. I started shooting all the time. These photos were really lame and boring, but it was a start. I probably shot more in those days than I ever have.

One of the things that intrigued me was when I used the macro setting to shoot things up close, I would get this really shallow depth of field. That looked “professional” to my untrained eye. I had no idea how it worked.

Then, probably Fall of 2001 or so, I took a beginning photography class as part of the graphic design major. Black and White Darkroom, SLR camera required. I pulled out Aunt Nancy’s camera and shot with it until it fell apart a year later. Changed majors, and I haven’t looked back since.

One of my best friends from high school, Casey, in Huntsville, TX. We planned an hour lunch with him on our way to Houston, but it ended up getting stretched to two hours. Ah well, it was worth it.

I think that St. Louis Arch is the most impressive piece of public art I’ve ever seen. We were driving back from Texas, and this time I stopped. I spent about 20 minutes photographing it, even though I know it’s totally been done. There’s just something about it.