But I had a life and a passion for that life and wanted to experience it before I decided on a career path. So I started exploring that life and me, I moved around quite a bit. I lived in big towns and small. I put some skills to use that I learned in high-school and developed new ones. As I said I found the opportunity to work in a teaching hospital which is where I first met Lorri. And then one day I'd had enough of life as I knew it and returned to San Antonio and returned to the photography game. Not right away after all it had been thirteen years and I didn't know anyone in the biz. I got a job in a professional photo store and on the side I did small gigs shooting small stories and small jobs. Then I started hearing about people needing an assistant's on bigger job that they couldn't handle on the own.

In time I started working with more local photographers assisting them and shooting small jobs of my own. Then I started getting out of town photographers who needed local assistance and location scouts. I suddenly found myself quite busy and when the local economy turned bad I was protected by have out of town clients who were starting to take me on locations with them. I worked for National Geographic, Bon Appetit and Time, to name but a few. But all things come to an end and in the late eighty I needed work so I pack up my few belongs and headed to New York City.

I came to NYC during the hottest summer on record for that time. I was lucky to know an assistant for Pete Turner who was an icon at the time and I leaned on him to show me the ropes. That the first year I wore out three pair of running shoes getting around town but did I ever get to know the city. I worked for anybody that would have me. The key to my success was to never give up, there was always's someone who needed my type of help I just hadn't found them yet. I'd go from photo-supply house to photo-finisher posting my listing and looking for new leads on work. And I had to look for housing too since I had three whole weeks to find a new place to live. Work turn out easier to find than housing or affordable housing being NYC. I finally found both in the form of one young lady who had finally given up and was moving back home and was trying to find someone to replace her in her house.

I say house, it was a three story walk up with a kitchen ,livingroom and two small bedrooms. Mine would fit in the space that a king-size bed would take up, but it was all mine even though it came with a roommate. But it was in the City and it had an extra bonus that she was working with a photographer and he need to replace her as well so I fit in perfectly. So I had some regular type employment at last, I worked first as a printer doing his work prints then I graduated and was asked to assist on a big commercial he was doing for Bloomingdale's. Now I'm not saying I was the greatest assistant there ever was or the strongest but I was forty years old at the time and nothing fazed me. Be at work at 5:30..., no problem I'd get up at 3:30 and have breakfast and hit the subway at 4:15 be in the City by 5:00 get a coffee and paper and get to work early; all for the princely sum of $85 a day. At work they asked us to line up and unfortunately I was the last in the line with four young men. The photographer ask each person if they were comfortable driving in the city. I was dying being the last in line, I just knew someone would say yes but to my surprised each of the young men declined because this was the big City and they were all nervous about driving. When he got to me and asked if I would drive I smile and told him hell yes, it wasn't my car.

So here at last I was getting the chance to work on a big City shoot and I was driving the cameraman around and I had raised my pay to $125 for the day. And this was hardcore photography, it was a Union job where the photographer was shooting the camera but needed a film guy to load it and Union guys to grip it. The camera guy looked at me and asked if I had any experience and knew how to run a clapboard. I'd only seen one around the sets of other film shoot I'd done and told him that everybody had a different way of running one and to show me how he like his run. He just laughed and showed me how to run it. No big deal but it showed him I was willing to learn anything he was willing to show me and he taught me a great deal on that shoot.

It was the challenge that I love, learning new thing and having to work hard to learn them. I remember walking around the City, those scary walks down crowed street fill with unfamiliar faces, smell and people's hard looks. I knew that this too would pass and in time I'd get the routine and I wouldn't be walking blocks out of my way. I slowly learn which streets to avoid because there were bad drug dealers on the street. Or which streets were dark even in the daytime and where rough looking people living or at least hung out. I learned which subway stations to avoid and at what time of day they were particularly dangerous. Day by day, week by week I learned to be a New Yorker.

There were delightful learning experiences as well as I wandered around the City; Union Square on weekends for the vegetables and fresh fruits. A bakery to find the freshest of breads and where to find a guy selling yogurt made the old fashion way. China-town, where to find Art supplies and fabrics to make room dividers and to drape over models. It was a whole new world out there just waiting for me to discover it, just waiting for me to learn where it was. It was exciting and scary at the same time, I'd find myself in mid-block of a street that had frighted me to death when I first got to New York but now I had a purpose a reason for being there.

In the summer there were street fair's and block parties, at one I saw Walter Cronkite and his family just being a family. While walking through Central Park I saw Mike Wallace and a friend just walking and talking like real people on a sunny day. And one day while waiting on a friend I was made to feel like the country-bumpkin I was; I saw Katherine Hepburn being fussed over by other jaded New Yorker. In short, I was beginning to feel at home, I was beginning to feel like a New Yorker, I felt as though I belonged.

I was learning to find my way in business too. I was getting a stable of photographers built, getting rid of the ones who were a pain in the ass to work with and keeping the one's who payed better or at least were more consistent in their work. I was getting people who really loved their work and worked hard at it and were good at it. I was learning a lot about the business and how it worked or worked best. I was learning lighting from the best , how to do portraits and how to set-up a room shoot. Best of all I was learning from the best, New York City photographers.