___________________________________________________________________________
I was born in 1960 in Augsburg, Germany in the German state of Bavaria near the Alps. My family moved to Mansfield, Ohio, in 1969 right before my 9th birthday. I became a US citizen in 1975. I lived in Ohio until 1979 when I began attending Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana after not having good enough vision to enter the United States Air Force Academy with the intention of becoming a combat pilot. At Purdue, I earned a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering and also completed graduate studies in Microelectronics and Semiconductor Physics. For the past 24 years, I have worked for the Intel Corporation in California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Arizona engaged in the production of the microprocessors, chip-sets, and communication chips that power modern Personal Computers, Workstations, File Servers, Super Computers and the Internet. Since 1994, I have lived in the south-central Arizona city of Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix in the Sonoran Desert. I have two sons, Nicholas (18) and Gregory (13). I am also a professional freelance Nature Photographer and have formally studied photography at the University of New Mexico, the Rocky Mountain School of Photography, and participated in photography seminars and workshops led by several renowned photographers including John Shaw, Arthur Morris, John and Barbara Gerlach, Charles Glatzer and the Nikon Corporation.
I received my first camera at age 7 - a now defunct 126, square-format, Kodak Instamatic. At age 12, I started to take pictures more seriously using a Yashica 35mm rangefinder with a 50mm f1.7 lens. At age 16 I switched to Minolta cameras starting with the XD-11 SLR and then progressing through the Minolta system ultimately ending up with the Minolta Maxxum 9000, the first pro-featured auto-focus SLR, in the late 1980's. In 1990, I suffered a serious skiing injury that was diagnosed as one that would prevent me from walking again due to the extensiveness of the damage to my left femur, thigh muscles, hip, and knee. When it looked like I may not walk again, I decided to sell all of my Minolta equipment. Determination, resolve and many months of physical therapy resulted in a full recovery after several surgeries 3 1/2 years later. During my recovery years, I got my drive and determination from aviation earning Private Pilot, Instrument Pilot, Multi-engine Pilot and Commercial Pilot certificates. I also became heavily involved in advanced flight simulation as pilot training aids and started writing articles about them for aviation magazines. This gave me the opportunity to log time in American Airline's full motion flight simulators where I learned to fly a Boeing 727. I have owned both single engine and multi-engine airplanes in the past but do not own an aircraft at present due to the incredible cost of private aviation.
After my full recovery I purchased an Olympus IS-1 Zoom Lens Reflex camera which I found to be way too limiting so I started over in 1994 using the Nikon system. I eventually ended up with Nikon Professional bodies and Nikon's professional grade AF-S lenses. The choice of Nikon was heavily influenced by John Shaw's photography and I concentrated primarily on Southwestern landscapes and captive species animal photography. In 1999, my photographic world expanded when I was introduced to the beautiful bird photography of Arthur Morris through a book called "The Art of Bird Photography" which he authored. The more I got into bird photography, the more it became apparent that Canon's Image Stabilization technology would result in a much higher percentage of sharp photos with the very long focal length lenses needed to get full frame bird photographs. Since December 2000, I have been photographing with Canon's professional EOS 1 series of camera bodies and Canon "L - series" professional lenses. In early 2002, I added the EOS 1D professional digital body and Lexar Digital Film flash cards to my photographic arsenal and in 2003 I added the full-frame EOS 1Ds and the EOS 10D digital bodies. In mid 2003, I sold my last film camera body as high end digital cameras began to equal the best film cameras in image quality. Today my primary landscape tool is the 16.7 megapixel EOS 1Ds Mark II and my primary wildlife camera is the EOS 1D Mark IIn camera. I use Canon's L-series of professional lenses and my media choice is the SanDisk Ultra and Extreme line of Compact Flash cards. For details on the tools that I use, please click on Equipment in the main menu above.
Artistic images of ducks is a photographic specialty and I am now teaching others Duck and bird photography through my DuckShopTM photographic workshop series. I have also expanded my love for landscape photography and am now heavily engaged in creating artistic landscape images of North America's great scenic wonders.
My photographs have been published in many nature, agriculture and photography magazines and books including Outdoor Photographer, Popular Photography, Birding Magazine, Audubon Society publications, National Geographic publications, Barron's Duck Handbook, Barron's Dove Handbook, the UK's Practical Photography and many smaller publications. The US National Park Service uses some of my images in their National Park Brochures as does the Fish and Wildlife Service. Several zoos from around the world (North America, Asia, Europe) use my photographs for their identification displays. My photos are also in widespread use in educational material for children in both Canada and the US. I was a Field Editor, Forum Moderator, and contributing author for the WEB based Nature Photography magazine NaturePhotographers.net until 2003 and am now Sr. Technical Editor and co-founder of the worlds premier Nature Photography web site NatureScapes.net. I have had a private exhibition of 30 of my photographs in Israel and teach an annual Introduction to Bird Photography courses and Outdoor Flash Photography at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior, AZ which is sponsored by the Audubon Society in conjunction with The University of Arizona.
