email Steve

A few words about me and my background as a photographer

I was a Big City Boy, raised in Los Angeles. During my undergraduate years at UCLA and my graduate years at USC, I worked in a recording studio in Hollywood and later as a projectionist at BBS Productions, under the mentorship of my friend, R. John Slosser. I worked in the homes of Jackie Cooper, Sidney Sheldon, Dick Martin and Peter Bogdanovich where I had amazing informal introductions to Sybil Shephard, Madeline Kahn, Ryan and Tatum O'Neill, George Kennedy, Bob Newhart, Buddy Hackett, Dean Martin, Suzanne Pleshette, Steve Lawrence and Edie Gourmet, Greg Morris, Vincent Minelli, Lucille Ball and more! We didn't take selfies or ask for autographs because that's not what professionals did in those days.

I took my first job outside of LA in Chico, CA where I experienced nature in ways not possible in the Big City. Seeing so much beauty, I decided I needed a camera to capture images that would help me remember.

But, buying a camera wasn't enough. I enrolled in Chico State University's photography classes to learn. I will never forget the first roll of film I exposed, developed and then used to create my first black and white enlargement.

IT WAS MAGIC and I was hooked.

John visited me from LA and brought his old darkroom gear to me and I found myself taking photos every Saturday and Sunday and developing and printing every night after work. From then on, photoraphy  became a contant passion for me and the journey from creating images of nature to images of people and later professional theatre and dance, weddings and religious lifecycle events were among the most rewarding work I could imagine. Whether it was creating documentary and archival images on film and video for Sacramento Theatre Company and California Musical Theatre Company/Music Circus, the Sacramento Ballet, or performances at various community theatres around the area or my daughters' performances at the Santa Catalina School in Monterey and later Catholic University of America (CUA) Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, I loved exceeding my customers' expectations when there was never an opportunity for a retake. And, when covering weddings, B'nai Mitzvot and portraits and headshots, I always find myself "in the zone," communicating with my subjects in both verbal and nonverbal ways to help them relax, have confidence in our relationship and deliver the best images of our lives.

While I still love doing events and portrait photography, I'm finding new and exciting ways to express my creativity as a documentary filmmaker, taking advantage of both my skills as photographer/cinematographer and storyteller. My 2005 "Eyes Wide Open, a Video Tone Poem" garnered both regional and national awards. My current project, "Who Cares About DC?" is a passion project, borne of the fact that relocating from California to D.C. meant giving up my full citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the US Constitutioon. But that, as they say, is another story!

I am a proud member of the American Society of Media Photographers/ASMP (still and video) as well as professional acting unions, SAG-AFTRA and Actors Equity Association.