I was born and raised in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs. Reading was required in our home; my mother demanded—and received—a book report from my sister and me each week during summer vacations in grade and middle school. My father took me into Chicago’s ”Loop” from time to time where I spent my visits looking up at the city’s wonderful architecture, and around at the art work on the walls of my favorite haunt, The Art Institute of Chicago.
While I started university studies in architecture, a chance to live in Paris, France, for many months between my sophomore and (delayed) junior year permanently shifted my focus to photography and journalism.
I graduated from the University of Kansas with a BS in journalism and minors in art history and psychology.
Following college, I worked two years for the Kansas City Star, and then in Chicago for nine years with the Sun-Times. My deepening interest in automobiles, their design and engineering, led me join AutoWeek magazine for about 15 months before returning to newspaper journalism at the Los Angeles Times in early 1984. I stayed at the Times for 11-and-a-half years, and was fortunate to work on some projects that earned the paper the Pulitzer Prize.
While at the Times, I wrote and photographed my first book, American Muscle, during 1989. I fell in love with the process and its challenges; these remain part of the appeal to this day. In mid 1995, after completing another seven books while still a full-time staffer, I left the Times to become a full-time author.
In 2011, my friend Pete Stout, who was editor of Excellence Magazine at the time, asked me to become his historical editor. When Pete moved on to Panorama, I was invited to tag along, and then when he founded his groundbreaking quarterly 000, he again invited me to work with him in the same capacity. Stout generously provided me countless opportunities to expand my knowledge of Porsche’s history, while challenging and improving me as a writer.
For five decades of my life, photography was a very significant part. A family trip to Europe in 1966 convinced me (and others, fortunately) that I had “an eye.” Shooting in Paris in 1968 encouraged me to think of it as a career, and from then on, it remained my job, or part of it as I migrated to books and writing. A conversation with an historian and bookseller in Germany in 2014 redirected me, however. He explained that my habit of photographing U.S models of the cars about which I wrote often confused European readers who did not recognize some features of the cars. Following that conversation, I took a poll, asking whether any reader anywhere preferred factory archival images to those I made. I received the message loudly and clearly and since then, my books rely on historical – and hopefully historically correct – images for illustration
I continue to shoot now. Beautiful light, fascinating subjects, interesting locations will grab me by the eyes and I go back to work. In another location on this site you will see some of the work I’ve done lately, watching the ever-shifting light and reflections on the Pacific Ocean very near where I live. A few folks have seen these and I’ve delivered some prints from this work. I’ve also included a small assortment of the work from earlier projects.
I live near Santa Barbara, California, in a small cottage with a wonderful view.
