Welcome to my first blog post. I have to be honest here. I don't know if I'm really into this.

At conferences and talking to my colleagues, they're like "yeah, yeah, you HAVE to have a blog" and I

guess your supposed to post images from your shoots and talk about how awesome and amazing they

are and how awesome the shoot was and how great the pictures are going to be. I'm not sure our

clients are into that and I'm not sure I'm into that. Don't get me wrong, we work our butts off on every shoot

and strive to deliver the best work around, but waving it around on social media...isn't facebook and Instagram

enough?

Sooooo, I think I'm just going to give you a little background and then in future posts we'll talk some about

my philosophy of photography (rambling), cool cameras, cheeseburgers and stuff. So...

Born: Hays, KS, 1961

Wife extraordinaire: Ang. (she's the B.W.P. office manager)

Daughter: Cecelia (Musical, funny, smart, good friends. Loves D2k.)

First photo class: 1976, Brookens Junior High School, Champaign, Urbana. Great pizza there and the town where I bought my

First Camera: Canon TX (35 mm film camera. Max shutter speed, 1/500th.) Actually, that was my first adjustable camera.

My parents got me a Kodak X-15 in about 1970.

High School: Hays High

College:

Hastings College, B.A. Sociology

Columbia College, Chicago, studied photography

School of the Art Institute of Chicago, studied photography

Took photo classes at other miscellaneous colleges.

USI, bachelors and teaching certificate.

First real photo job: Freelancing for newspapers in Chicago.

First staff job: Greensburg Daily News.

Currently: Photographer at Bartholomew Wedding Photography.

Photographers who most influenced me: John H. White, Tony Ashe (first photo teacher), Steve McCurry, Jim Richardson,

Stan Malinowski, Robert Farber...really there's just so many. All those photographers who worked for LIFE in the 60's and 70s.

Knew I was going to be a photographer in about '69, looking at LIFE magazine.

Equipment that I love: Old Leicas and Nikons.

Knowing that since I'm a photographer, a photo is expected in a blog post, Here's a cheeseburger (OK, double)

from Bass Pro. It rocked and my daughter agrees.

Cheers,

Tom