My father worked around X-rays.   My mother wrote poems.   My grandfather carried a camera.   Then one day they handed me one.   13 years old.   And suddenly the whole world revealed itself under light.  Skateboards.   Friends.   Parking lots at midnight.   Cheap beer.   Bloody elbows.   The bands.   Jane's Addiction.   Soundgarden.   Slayer.   Noise coming through blown speakers like the ceiling was going to cave  in.  I thought  maybe i wanted to play guitar.   But the camera kept winning.   My father built a darkroom in the closet.   Red light.   Chemical trays.   Film hanging in the bathroom like ghosts.   And i remember thinking: wait a second… you can do this?   You can paint with light?  After that it was over.   Dishwasher.   Busboy.   Waiter.   Prep cook.   Sauté chef.   All for film.   All for another roll.   Another print.   Another mistake to learn from.  Eventually photography school.   Then the idea of motion.   What happens after the frame.   What happens before the silence.   I applied to New York University.   Applied to School of Visual Arts.   Couldn’t afford it.  So
i kept working.   Printing fashion photographs for famous Italians.   Watching shadows move across white walls.   Learning light.   Learning faces.   Learning life.   Miami.   New York City.  Assisting carrying cases through freight elevators.   Models smoking on fire escapes.   Photographing strangers,  trying to become someone.   Then somewhere along the journey the still image started to breath.   Photography became cinematography.   Cinematography became directing.   And all these years later it’s still the same thing.   A man creating the moment where image becomes emotion.