About ten years ago, photography came my way
almost by accident. My wife and I had recently returned from our
honeymoon, and I was showing co-workers at the San Bernardino County
Medical Center (now Arrowhead Regional Medical Center) snapshots
from our trip. Dr. Dorian Snyder, who is an accomplished and published
photographer when he’s not saving lives, was looking over our shoulder
and kept commenting on images that I had taken. He subsequently
encouraged me for months to pick up a camera and take a more
serious approach at shooting photos. After a few “basic
photography” primers, usually in between patient care (I
am also an R.N.), I ventured out with an old Canon AE1 that my
wife’s Uncle Jim had given her many years ago. It didn’t
take long for me to be captivated. After only a couple of years
and more tutoring from the good Dr. Snyder, I actually won my
first award at the Los Angeles County Fair Millard Sheets Photography
Exhibition. We subsequently won showings and place finishes over
the next several years, and my work was chosen to appear in the
San Bernardino County Art Association’s 2000-Millenium
Calendar.
For several years I dreamed
of being the next Ansel Adams, with some small successes along
the way, when our Fine Art clients started “bugging” me
to do family portraits, weddings, etc. Initially, I would explain
that portrait photography was as different from landscape photography
as being a plumber is different from being an electrician. Finally,
Noelle Sims (now Tiegs) talked me into photographing her family.
Although I was clueless as to how to create a portrait photo, she
insisted that I try. That image is in the portrait section of our
new site, the one with Noelle, her daughter Paige, and their dog
Max. Subsequently, she was our first wedding client also. That
work turned into more portrait and wedding work from other clients,
and soon we were portrait photographers! In a twist of fate that
I never imagined (and resisted for some time), wedding and portrait
photography has become the heart of our business. Today, we are
doing several portrait and wedding sessions in any given month,
and we are getting busier all the time. I would like to thank
Dorian and Noelle for seeing something in our work, and encouraging
us to move forward with the business, and everyone along the
way that has trusted us to capture their special moments. Our
goal is to create imaginative images by communicating with our
clients and to reflect their spirit in all of our work.
Mike, Bev and Selah

Equipment;
For those of you who care, we use
top of the line Pro Nikon and Fuji digital cameras and lenses,
including the awesome Nikon D2X and Fuji S3 Pro cameras. We also
occasionally dust off our Pentax 645n medium format film camera
for certain applications, especially for our commercial clients,
and our fine art work . Photoshop CS2 is our primary photo application,
but we utilize a variety of software in our digital workflow. We
are also a Pictage Partner, and we utilize their lab for most of
our portrait and wedding print applications. You can visit www.pictage.com
to see more of our work.