about me

As a seven-year-old child growing up in Colombia, I first noticed that my mother used a camera to take photos of people and moments that she wanted to preserve. She used a Coronet Twelve 20 (yes, this is it, I got it a few years before she passed away). I soon became curious about how it worked and started asking her questions about it. She didn’t use it a lot, as the film and developing were pretty expensive. For her, it was a luxury to be able to take a few photos here and there. By the time that I was 10 years old, she had taught me how to load a roll of film and sometimes she would allow me to press the shutter after she had set up a shot. It was always a photo of her friends or our family at a gathering.

After moving to the United Sates, I bought my first camera, a Minolta XE7. I was 18 years old and  just trying to figure out what to do with my life. I had decided that I wanted to become a computer programmer, a field which was very promising in 1974. Being married at 18, I found myself having to balance a job, learn English and acclimate to life in Seattle. I wound up bouncing between career choices and letting the need to have an income make the decision for me. I settled on getting a graphic design degree, taking photography and dark room classes here and there. One of my graphic design instructors took it upon himself to help me get focused and recommended me to his friend, who owned a small Printing Company called Art Printing.

After graduating, I found myself working as a designer at that printing company. It was there that I would be exposed to a Vertical Commercial camera, used to shoot large sheets of film (12″ x 18″) and the development process in a commercial dark room. I wasted no time and asked the owner, Tony Ferrucci, if I could learn how to use the camera. He instructed the operator, a young German intern, to help me learn. After a year at the shop, Tony encouraged me to join the Seattle Printing and Graphics program, run in cooperation with the Pressman Union. The two-year program taught me to shoot on a 20″ x 24″ horizontal camera and to separate continuous tone images into primary colors, via filters. Within a year in the Printing and Graphics program I was offered a job at a larger printing company. Tony was broken-hearted but encouraged me to take the job. He was a significant influence in my life, whose kindness put me where I am today.

I was hired at Universal Printing as a cameraman and stripper. OK, is not what you think. stripping was a job in printing companies that entailed mounting film on flats that would then be burned onto Printing plates. I did camera, darkroom work and film stripping, jobs that would disappear as computers took over the creation of commercial graphic materials. Being an extremely curious person, I went along with the technology wave until I found myself one day as Vice-President of Digital Services at Quebecor, a global printing and media company.

Over the years I kept buying newer cameras and trying to keep myself engaged in photography as an art to balance the commercial route that I wound up taking to earn a living. My cameras included a Pentax ZX-7, a Sony A100 (sorry no photo, I gave that camera away) and a Sony A65. Quite a few of the images (my work) that you see on this website and on my Instagram were shot with the A65.

I recently bought a Lumix GH6 because I want to move deeper into videography. Now in my 60s, I am very excited about adding another segment to my journey as a photographer that started with my mother’s Coronet Twelve 20.  

It is all part of the journey!