Where it all begins.
It all begins with her. A beautiful young woman, that supported me from the day I was born in whatever I wanted to do. From Football and Baseball as a kid (and GAWD did I suck at them) to being a soldier when it looked like our country was going to war, to being a photographer. My mom has always been my biggest cheerleader and best friend. Which was saying something since I was a little hellion and turned her hair prematurely grey. Life was rough in the beginning for a teenage girl, and her newborn son, especially when the boy’s father leaves at 10 months of age. We had family though, and a family that loved and helped us, and by GAWD spoiled me, being the last child of that branch of the family. While in night school, she met another man. This one was one that had a sense of family, and responsibility, and to be honest some hellion in him too. He adopted me though, and gave me his name when they got married, and treated me as his own flesh and blood. And taught me to love photography since he was a self taught amateur.
Dad
Like I said, while Dad had his good qualities, he was also somewhat of a hellion himself. That’s him and me on his motorcycle a Honda CB750-4. It’s where I got my love of motorcycles, something else he influenced me on unwittingly. And yes that was taken in the 1970s so, yes I’m old. Just like that old Honda, when Dad got a Pentax K1000, I was hooked. It fascinated me that these little strips of cellulose would become reproductions of what we saw. A small slice of time recorded to history, so we won’t forget. Now it’s bytes of 1s and 0s arranged in a certain order, that with proper backups, can last forever in digital format, and be printed out on paper that with the proper inks and papers, and care taken can last hundreds of years.