My early photographic memories were of faded black and white family albums depicting relatives who, for the most part, had died in Germany before I was born. Later on, my parents would—very sporadically— take family pictures on weekend outings or vacations. In the 1960s, my father bought a fancy German Rolleiflex camera which, again, was seldom used to portray family events.
My first serious camera was an analog Nikon single lens reflex (SLR) model that my wife and I bought in the mid-1970s and used primarily for travel, under the old M.O. of taking film rolls to a photography store for development, or else, obtaining first a contact sheet to select the better images. With this new camera, we took classes with an American friend and neighbor in Rio who was a professional photographer and exposed us to the basic techniques, as well as to the principal artistic photographers of the 20th century.
Coming to the U.S. in 1979 to pursue a busy career as an economist at a multilateral organization, I seldom had a chance to use my Nikon, including because of the underlying concern that taking good shots would require a considerable effort to develop them at a Motophoto outlet and file them in old-fashioned albums.
It was only after I retired from that job in 2008 that I started to explore in earnest the potential of I-Phone photography, and take a few local courses in the medium. Extensive domestic and foreign travel has since provided the opportunity to shoot novel images, and also prompted me to look with a keener eye at landscapes and people closer to home.
More recently, a number of trips to Sicily, Croatia, East and Southeast Asia and, just before the pandemic, to India have provided ample opportunities for shooting. I also have enjoyed documenting landscapes in Michigan, where our children live, and around our vacation home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.