I read like a crazy person, I play the piano, and I'm a photographer. I always say my photography keeps me sane. I spend a lot of time in the darkroom. It's a very solitary, quiet life when I'm not working.
I fell in love with the darkroom, and that was part of being a photographer at the time. The darkroom was unbelievably sexy. I would spend all night in the darkroom.
I told myself, 'When I grow up, I want to make pictures that can inspire and nourish people.' Immediately, when I was 10, I started photographing nature. I built a darkroom. My first really good darkroom, not just down in the cellar, was when I was 14.
I had gone to nursing school at Northampton Community College in my hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And nursing didn't feel quite right, and an old boyfriend gave me a 35-millimeter camera just to play with. So, I took a darkroom class.
The boy I was crazy about was super into photography, so I weaseled my way into AP Photo to impress him and spend more time with him. He never liked me back, but I ended up spending most my senior year in the darkroom - it became a sort of safe haven for me.
I was on the yearbook staff, so I would take out film cameras and Nikons and take photos around school and at sporting events and things like that. We had a darkroom as well. I just loved it. I also saved up for a video camera to video my friends and cut and paste the videos together and I gave them to all of my friends for graduation.
I believe Photoshop is in some way the contemporary darkroom, the creative area that all photographers have available today.
I've been a photographer all these years... I haven't been in my own darkroom for 10 years.
Then I thought I was going to be a photographer. I tried a hand at darkroom technician. I played in a band. It took me quite some time to discover that I wanted to write.
I never stopped photographing. There were a couple of years when I didn't have a darkroom, but that didn't stop me from photographing.
