In the mid 1970's, a friend and I started a production company doing things like product rollouts and marketing programs. He dropped out along the way and I stumbled along on my own. Eventually we were doing major projects for people like Boeing, Nintendo, Nordstrom, Weyerhaeuser and the like. At the same time my wife was building a design firm. We had employees and everyone was working 24/7. By early 2000, we'd had enough and decided to downsize to one client each, no physical office and no employees. Which is more or less where we're at today. I get to spend about half my time earning some money and the other half trying to make art. My next door neighbor the first year in college was Basil Rathbone's great grand-son, a wonderful guy by the name of Rodian Rathbone. He had a Yashicaflex twin lens camera, and was given to dramatic ideas (no surprise, I guess). My girlfriend at the time lived in Seattle and I in Portland, and somehow with Rodian's encouragement, I cooked up this idea to make a book of photos and calligraphed poems to give her for Christmas. Minor details being that my poetry was awful, my penmanship worse and I didn't know the first thing about photography. Not to worry. Rodian showed me how to use the camera, I got keys for a faculty darkroom from the horn player in the woodwind quintet, another fellow loaned me a nice pen, and away we went with the full ignorance and passion of youth. The book got done, the girl was impressed and I learned an awful lot about the importance of friends. And quite weirdly enough I have been combining words and pictures for pay in some fashion virtually every day of my adult life since then. Pismo Surfer

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