My father worked around X-rays.   My mother wrote stories.   My grandfather carried a camera.   Then one day they handed me one.   13 years old.   And suddenly the whole world looked guilty under light.  Skateboards.   Friends.   Parking lots at midnight.   Cheap shoes.   Bloody elbows.   Then 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.  Maybe save my life.   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 yourself?   You can pull something out of nothing with your own hands?  After that it was over.   Dishwasher.   Busboy.   Waiter.   Prep cook.   Sauté cook.   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 moving.   Printing fashion photographs for Italians from Milan.   Watching shadows move across white walls.   Learning light.   Learning faces.   Learning life.   Miami.   New York City.  Assistants carrying cases through freight elevators.   Models smoking on fire escapes.   Photographing strangers trying to become someone.   Then somewhere along the line the still image started breathing.   Photography became cinematography.   Cinematography became directing.   And all these years later it’s still the same thing.   A man trying to hold onto light for one second longer before it disappears.