Born in Syracuse, New York, to Russian Immigrant parents. I spoke Russian as a first language while growing up in New Jersey, just outside of New York City. I began experimenting with a Kodak instamatic camera at a very early age and learned to develop black and white film and paper in my darkroom at the age of nine. My father had an interest in photography and he built a dedicated darkroom in our house. A dedicated darkroom was a real luxury when a modified bathroom would have been more than adequate. I was greatly inspired by the incredible photographs in National Geographic Magazine. I soon realized that if removed a National Geographic it's brown wrapper that I wouldn't be able to put it down until I had viewed every photograph in the issue. If I had something else to do I would have to try to avoid the temptation to view the cover photo.

As well as playing back yard football and building tree forts I practiced techniques I learned from a library book called 'darkroom magic'. I experimented with different techniques as pushing film speed, polarization, line drawing, sepia toning, and tone separation. I also shot a few rolls of infrared film and used various contrast filters on my enlarger. Some of my trials resulted in some very interesting images and taught me advanced darkroom procedures. Although many of those techniques produced results which can be recreated with digital processing, some of them cannot. For some effects there simply is no substitute for a darkroom and chemical photography.

While attending College in New Hampshire my passion for photography grew. I often used the college darkroom to develop my own film and prints. One day the photography professor informed me that the use of the darkroom was restricted to students of his class. I replied that I was in the darkroom practically four nights a week and his students were never there. Additionally, I did not need a class in photography. I asked him who he thought had been cleaning up the darkroom and mixing fresh chemicals? I never had a problem using the darkroom after that.

Often, friends of mine who were enrolled in the photography class would neglect to complete an assignment. They would come to me asking if I had an image that met the assigned criteria, such as; shadows, textures, motion, landscapes, still life, etc. I would always have a suitable image among my hundreds of negatives. I would often print one and provide it to them to submit as their own work.

 The first photography contest I entered was themed ‘fall foliage’ in New Hampshire. Although New Hampshire is famous for its colorful fall colors, as a poor college student I did not have the means to have a color slide printed and matted. I submitted and interesting Black and White shot of some leaves against a weathered, old, wooden, barn. I composed the image from a unique perspective, looking up along the wood of the barn toward the fall sky above. I was quite surprised when I won the contest with a Black and White image.

I worked for many years as a waiter/captain/Maitre’D in four star restaurants in Northern New Jersey during my many years of high school and college. In the restaurants I learned quite a bit about attention to detail, exquisite service, cooking and gastronomy. The uniform was a black tuxedo and often white gloves. There were many occasions where a table for eight would have four waiters. I prepared such dishes as frog legs, crepes suzettes, bananas foster, Caesar salads, and shrimp provencale tableside. I also learned to decant wine, carve and serve chateubriande and de-bone Sole at the table.

At the age of twenty I took some time off from school and lived in Marburg, Germany. Marburg is a very picturesque University town in Northern Germany with beautiful old architecture. There I practiced photography, learned to speak German, and began learning to fly sailplanes. During this time I worked primarilly with color slide film. I have found that the most significant element of working with slides is in learning to completely compose an image in your mind. Once a slide is processed and mounted in the frame there can be no alterations. The image cannot be color corrected or even cropped as a color print can. Everything in the image must be composed while anticipating the effect of shutters speed, depth of field, lighting, and composition. Once projected on a screen the resulting images are large, vibrant, and colorful far beyond what any prints could ever be. I think I can understand how Paul Simon felt as he sings praise for color slides in his famous song; 'Kodachrome'

After college I got my first ‘real job’ as a quality control technician at a company called Medi-Physics, a Radio-Pharmaceutical Laboratory that produced radio-isotopes for nuclear medicine. It was an extremely technical and interesting job which soon became very routine. Working in a laboratory all day with 6 foot thick concrete walls without windows was gloomy and confining. I couldn't stand the repetitiveness of the daily routine. (The picture at left is of me sitting in the fume hood, meditating). I worked there for several years until I joined the Army in order to pursue a passion for flying helicopters. I intended to learn how to fly and spend a few years traveling before resuming my laboratory job. Prior to shipping out to flight school I got married in a Russian Orthodox ceremony in New York City. My beautiful daughter Natalie was born in Ft. Rucker, Alabama while I was in flight school.

During my military service I have flown Cobra gunships in Colorado and Korea as well as Apache gunships in the 101st Airborne Division, Germany, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. I quit the active Army and entered the Reserves in 1996 when I founded a homebuilding company; Ampersand, Incorporated. One of my reasons for remaining in the Reserves was so that I would have access to the public darkroom on Ft. Campbell. I owned a house in the community near Ft. Campbell, where I started my construction company, and I was interested in continuing to use the darkroom facilities. Without at least a Reserve military identification card I would not be allowed on post, so the choice was easy. I was in the darkroom so often that when the program was cut I was called and offered the opportunity to purchase the enlargers and other equipment. I rushed right over and bought thousands of dollars of professional equipment at a fraction of the cost.

After a failed partnership and a long and exhausitng legal battle ended in the ruin of Ampersand, Inc., I accepted a position as a Department of the Army Civilian Apache Instructor Pilot near Houston, Texas. After twenty years in the Army and many varied and interesting assignments I have finally admitted to being a ‘lifer’.

I have always continued to pursue my interest in photography while traveling with the Army. Although I used a Hasselblad for several years I have otherwise always used Canon equipment exclusively. Most of the photos on my pages are from recent deployments with my newest camera, a Canon EOS 1D Mark II. Although I sold my Hasselblad and darkroom equipment, I still have every other camera that I have ever used since the first Kodak instamatic.

Languages: Russian/German
Degree: Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Married in 1988, Divorced in 1995.
Children: One Daughter, Natalie