early work

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Like so many other photographers,I got my  first camera, a Rolleiflex copy called a Ciroflex,  from my father just as I'd enrolled in a Photography degree program in SF, Ca in 1966.   Looking down into its waist level  ground glass  for the first time, I knew Id found something that was me !!  I was hooked, separated from the world but seeing the world translated by a camera.  I'd been  drawing and painting from a young age, but neither had really piqued  my total interest..Music was more interesting, and I was playing in folk groups, and eventually a rock and roll band in San Francisco

playing clubs, bars, the Fillmore West, dance halls, and protest marches, the usual fairs , eventually landing  record contract with Trident Records in San Francisco.   But I had no time to  sit inside practicing while going to school, and I was tepid regarding  the music scenes drug use , so I escaped to my whole new world of photography. Photography was as it  for me from  then on !!!...I was fortunate to live in San Francisco during the counter culture revolution, the "Hippie Days", so I had great subject matter  all around.. After school I  was finally able to afford a good camera, a  Leica M3, and snapped up a used one at  a bargain price  of only $150 with a 50mm lens.. I photographed with that camera and that lens only for  next 25 years.  My only wish was for Leica to put a meter in it so  I wouldn't have to guess my  exposure all  the time.  They did eventually put one in the M6  !..