In 1979, I received a phone call from Ansel Adams asking me if I would be willing to consider coming to work for him. I was teaching photography in Southern California at that point.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I took a workshop from him a few months after that. That experience changed my whole approach to photography. At that workshop in Yosemite in 1973 I decided I wanted to try and see if I could pursue this for myself, and I'm still trying.
My father did advertising photography.
I began after college, about 1972. I began to teach myself photography. I went to work for a local newspaper for four years as a kind of basic training.
I met and became close with John Szarkowski of the Museum of Modern Art. He was incredibly supportive about me working in color.
There have been so many photographers and editors who mentored me over the years. At the very beginning, the person who taught me the most was Arthur Elgort. I always loved working with him. We traveled a lot together.
I felt like I was in the best photography school in the world - I had Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn teach me.
I worked for a publishing company in Hollywood.
My father was a photographer at the National Bureau of Standards. A self-educated man, he never finished high school, but in his career at the National Bureau of Standards, he made many useful inventions and eventually became chief of the Photographic Technology Section.
I got a phone call from Douglas Campbell and from Jerome Guthrie, who offered me a job out of the blue.
I graduated from the University of Oklahoma, and I got the opportunity to take some on-camera classes while I was in school and met a casting director who informed me quite a bit before my move out to L.A.; it made L.A. feel possible, coming from Oklahoma and not having a family that was in the industry.