In 1999 I started to get seriously interested in photography. Naturally beginning with 35mm color film, the most accessible format, my preference quickly became black and white and more formal imagery. After purchasing my first Pentax67 and learning how to do my own prints and negatives, I got to work learning all about this field.

Since the mid-1980s, I've been a computer programmer. But before that, in graduate school at Kansas University, my major was Chinese language, history and philosophy (M.A.). After moving to New York City, I worked at various jobs, among them an interpreter for an acupuncturist, private detective (for two days), an editor, and later, for several years as contract negotiator in China for a trading company. At one point, albeit briefly, I was fluent enough in Chinese that in China people often thought I worked for the Liaison Office (the precursor to our embassy).

Eventually, I returned to graduate school at Columbia University (East Asian Languages and Cultures), to continue studying Chinese History and Philosophy, mainly Neo-Confucianism. Along the way, I picked up computer programming, wrote some popular shareware programs, such as Xword, a widely used file format conversion program which PC Magazine picked as the best file format converter in 1986. The next year I left school to become a programmer for real, first for Ashton-Tate (the owner of dBase), and later on for companies such as Logitech and Chemical (now Chase) Bank, and currently work at a large insurance company in Manhattan.