grey day

photographic beginnings...

In 1999, I was living in Boston and attending The Boston Conservatory for music. I rode the T everywhere, to school, to work and for fun. As I rode, I became fascinated by all of the reflections on the windows of the train, and started thinking about photography - about what it would be like to create an image from what I saw. I had never used a manual camera before and had no experience at all.... in fact, due to some idiosyncrasies in my education, I'd never even taken a visual arts class. At the time, I was becoming dissatisfied with studying classical music and in a fit of spontaneity, I decided to take a leave of absence from school. I bought a used manual SLR camera, a Pentax K-1000 from Bromfield Camera in Downtown Crossing. The camera store showed me how to load film and how to balance the meter and so I wandered around Boston shooting my first rolls of black and white film.

A few weeks later, I moved to Cape Cod for the rest of the summer and co-managed a youth hostel in Truro. I brought my "new" camera along. I had a few rolls of slide film, and I mostly just photographed my surroundings. I loved it.

That fall, I enrolled at New England School of Photography in Boston. After putting all of my resources towards studying music, this was a huge and probably not well-thought out change, but it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Now, 12 years later, I am getting ready to begin my MFA at the Art Institute of Boston in a low-residency program - practically across the street from NESOP.

As I was cleaning out my home office last weekend to create some work space for myself, I found this image buried in my desk - it's one of my first images,  shot on my bedside table in the summer of 1999 on the Cape, before I had even an inkling of what an f-stop was...