Well, I was actually a writer before I was a photographer. I started taking pictures when I joined my high school yearbook staff as a writer. We only had a few people on our staff, so everybody had to do everything. So the writers had to learn how to take pictures and I participated in a photo workshop and I enjoyed it so much, they wanted me to take pictures. I focused on sports since I played a lot of sports.
I got really good really fast I enjoyed it so much. I said “You know this is what I want to do for a living, become a professional photographer.” So I pursued that as a career, but I continued to write stories, write poems, and things like that. When my very first children’s book happened, Rim Shots, it actually came out of me looking for work as a photographer.
So I was able to come full circle. The writing was what was first, but I got my degree in photography.
I got into children’s books, I always say I kind slipped in through the back door because I never planned on doing children’s books. I had a collection of photographs that I had done, guys playing street basketball in New York City. And I had done this series for two years just of my own personal project. I was getting these great shots and I decided to them in a portfolio.
So I was showing that portfolio in addition to my regular portfolio of images that I used to get and I approached a children’s book publisher about doing photographic book covers for them. But the art director who hires photographers saw these black and white basketball pictures after my previous portfolio, and said “These pictures should be their own book.”
That’s how my very first book Rim Shots, came about. I mentioned that I was also a writer, so it was filled with stories, poems, little you know snippets of dialogue. It was a really different kind of a book. I enjoyed it so much, and more importantly I enjoyed seeing it out for so long because when you’re a commercial photographer you do picture for a magazine and a month later it’s gone.
So, it was fun to see the book out for a longer period, and I said “Oh let me try it again.” And so now it’s 10 years and 28 books later. And I’m still here.
