This book is about my first years of photography that began in 1947 in the small town of San Carlos, California on the “San Francisco Peninsula.” In 1939, my parents bought a lot and built our house there. Hay fields spread out in all directions, the population was 3,000, and from the hills you could see all the way to San Francisco. Across the street from our house there was a seasonal creek where we caught pollywogs in the spring, and Poison Oak in the summer! I did all the things kids do growing up in that environment, but it was also where I first became interested in photography, and learned how to use a camera.
This book is organized into two parts. The first part has photos taken from 1947 to 1953, and the second has those taken from 1954 to 1959. Part I begins with photos I took while in the 7th grade, and ends when I graduated from high school. Part II includes photos taken during my university years, and ends with the photos of shipboard life while I was in the US Coast Guard. The photos have been adjusted for brightness, contrast, and sharpness, but to illustrate my photography they have not been cropped or corrected by rotation. At the end of the introduction to Part II, is a short evaluation of my photography during its first 12 years.