Before I Knew What I Was Doing

Every photographer has a beginning. This is mine.

These photos were shot between 2005 and 2009 on a Canon AE-1 35mm that belonged to my father. He had carried it since the early 1980s, the same way his father had carried cameras before him. Around 1998 I asked if I could borrow his gear, thinking I might want to try photography. He said yes. When I showed him what I had been making, he told me to keep everything. He said I would get more use out of it than he ever would.

These images span North Carolina, where I was raised, and Florida, where life took me on occasion. Farm country, portraits of friends, lighthouses at sunset, highways stretching south. Shot on film, developed, printed, and eventually digitized. These scans are all that remain of that early work.

The eye you see here is young and still finding itself. But the instincts that would carry through decades of work are already present. This is where it started.