On the morning of my 6th birthday, mom and dad gave me an easel with a set of paints and brushes. But before I could get a good grip on the easel, I was pried free and put on a school bus to endure 8 hours of Catholic education. It seemed like the second hand on every classroom's clock at the Academy of St. Dorothy was broken that December day of 1974. I could have sworn I even saw one tick backwards. After the dismissal bell rang I was the first brat on the school bus home. The only thing that made the thirty-minute journey endurable was that Jack-the-bus-driver had on my favorite radio station that played lots of Carpenters songs. Before the bus could come to a halt at the foot of our driveway, I had broken through the swinging doors, run passed a freshly baked yellow cake with chocolate frosting, and hurried into my playroom where the new easel awaited. More than 30 years have since passed. But the way I feel about my camera today is not far from the emotions I experienced on that December 1974 afternoon. In short, I still love making pictures.

When asked as a kindergartener what I wanted to be when I grow up, I’d usually respond, "an artist." But I was always told that if I chose that career path that I’d die poor. It seems funny now, but when I was 5 years old those words were very frightening. They didn’t stop me though and throughout my childhood I kept a sketchbook handy at all times. I spent most of my summers with mom, dad, grandma, and grandpa drawing on the porch of our tiny lake house in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania. My subjects were almost always trees, especially solitary ones. My mom has always been my best friend so when I was sent off to kindergarten at the age of 4 I had a hard time adjusting to the 7 hours without her. I was able to hold myself together for a few hours, but when recess came and the other kids headed for the see-saws, I headed for a very large old oak tree where I was able to hide and let go of a good cry. I still find great comfort in lonely looking trees, and often photograph any that I am fortunate enough to stumble upon.

Late one evening when I was 12 years old, my family returned to New York after spending the summer in Pennsylvania. All my paintings and sketchbooks and all our clothes were tightly packed in the car. It was so late that we decided to empty the car in the morning. When I awoke the next day, I saw my mom and dad with a very upset look on their faces and I saw a big empty space in our driveway where a Buick should have been. The car had been stolen the night before, along with everything we had in the car including my short lifetime’s work of sketches and paintings. I was so disheartened by the loss that I gave up my lofty dreams of becoming an artist. Everyone is right, I thought. I’ll just die poor anyway.

So I diverted my focus away from my easel, studied hard and somehow managed to get myself into Princeton with the intention of becoming a corporate lawyer on Wall Street. My God. What the hell was I thinking? After getting a big red ‘D’ in Economics 101, my academic advisor informed me that it might be of benefit to remap my career path. So I became an English Literature major after a patient creative writing professor took interest in me and taught me how to more effectively use a typewriter. After reading "Wuthering Heights" for the first time, I developed a crush on the Bronte sisters and read all of their books and essays. My senior thesis was an analysis of Emily Bronte’s strict religious upbringing and its influence on the book, "Jane Eyre."

After graduating from Princeton in 1990, I accepted a job offer working for a private sector corporation that built and managed prisons. I took the job because it was located in Nashville, Tennessee, a city that I fell in love with from the first week my college roommate took me there to see his home. I spent over 2 years traveling around the United States driving from prison to prison, writing detailed reports about how each facility was doing. In the winter of 1992, I was selected to join a team of 6 that would be in charge of opening a 1200 bed maximum-security detention facility in Davidson County. Because it was a Nashville based corporation, this facility was to serve as a shiny example of the benefits of private prison management. After nearly a year of 80 hour work weeks with no vacation, the first batch of 100 inmates were lead through intake and tucked in to shiny new rubber mattresses and starchy white sheets. Every week another 100 inmates checked in, and since one of the many hats I wore was Inmate Grievance Coordinator, every new inmate meant another new goddamned complainer. It was about this time in my life that I began drinking heavily. In the winter of 1993, Warden Sharon Johnson did one of the nicest things that anyone has every done for me…she forced me to resign. "You are miserable here and you will always be miserable here," she said. You are on the middle rung of a corporate ladder you were never meant to climb." Thank you Sharon Johnson…you saved my life.

I started designing websites in 1994. My mom and dad had bought me a Commodore 64 computer for Christmas in 1980 so I was already fluent in a variety of computer languages. Combined with my overactive imagination, web and graphics design was a far better match for me than explaining to rapists and murderers why their breakfast’s powdered eggs were cold. I named my little design studio "the Treetop" for its woodsy location and my affinity for trees. It has provided me with an ample stream of income that I have been mainlining into my photography hobby since watching an episode of my favorite television show, "Northern Exposure."

It would seem that one of my greatest artistic influences is a fictitious one since I bought my first serious camera about 11 years ago after watching reruns of every episode of Northern Exposure from the Pilot to the Finale. My roommate K.C. and I used to meet every weekday in front of the television at 5:00 since the A&E channel started running the show in syndication. My favorite character was Chris Stevens; radio personality, catapult builder, spiritual expediter, petty thief, philosopher, philanderer, and mixed media metal sculptor. During the 5 seasons the show ran, I watched Chris blossom from a glib ex-con into a true artist and wondered why I couldn’t do the same.

Website design also opened the studio doors of one of the world’s greatest photographers, Senor Jim McGuire. After designing his website, he invited me to work as his assistant for a day while he shot his 556th album cover for one of Nashville's many great musicians. I learned more about photography during that shoot than in the 5 years prior, including such invaluable lessons as "heavy background props require a sandbag to hold them upright," and, "if your subject is uncomfortable or nervous in front of a camera, get them drunk." Since the day I met him, McGuire has been a constant source of knowledge, inspiration, friendship, and thoroughbred handicapping statistics.

In the spring of 2001, I was asked by two dear friends to photograph their wedding in Ireland. The day before I was set to take off for the emerald isle, I forgot to pull the emergency brake on my car and accidentally sent it down the end of my driveway into a conveniently placed elm tree 200 feet below. Despite this and an intense fear of flying, I went to Ireland where my life would change more dramatically for the better than at any other time in my life with the exception of when I married my beautiful and incredibly patient roommate, the former K.C. Abbott. Viewing the Irish landscape through a camera lens is a joy that I wish to share with everyone. Since I can’t afford that many Aer Lingus plane tickets, the best way I know how to share my visual discoveries is to print photographs of the many places I have been fortunate enough to travel to.

There may finally come a day when I can look in the mirror and call myself an artist. For now, I am content to be a student of photography and of life, attempting to preserve the unpreservable and immortalize the mortal. Whether it is the face of an aging young woman or the face of an eroding Irish cliffside, my images are the precious crumbs of my life experience. When I am just ashes in a County Clare breeze, I hope that these photographs will serve as a gentle reminder of the places I visited and the friendly faces I knew along the way.