I cannot imagine doing anything else. I learned early on, that there would be no guarantees in my life and that I could create opportunities through hard work. By giving freely of myself I have been the direct beneficiary of many rewards. NETWORKING probably has been the most important tool that I have created for myself. I also learned that opportunities only come once, and that you must be prepared to act on them or be left wishing you had.

1956-1970
I was born in Utica New York in 1956 to Barbara and Richard Peres. My dad moved to Utica to work for Brooks Brothers clothiers where he met my mom in 1954. My mother’s father was a jeweler and he had a struggling jewelry business on Bleecker Street. My grandmother was very special and I can remember many visits to her 2003 Baker Avenue duplex when I was growing up. Utica at the time was a city of 125,000+ residents and was a fun place to be a kid. In 1958, my sister Abbe was born. We were fairly typical kids and enjoyed a fun childhood visiting New Jersey each summer to see my father's mother and of course my grandmother or taking day trips to the Adirondack mountains which were just north of Utica. I went to John F. Hughes grammar School .

I can only remember a few of my grammar school teachers and Mrs. Carmella Catera is one that I remember because I was in her Introductory Physical Science class a sort of accelerated class. I learned about titration, distillations as well as environmental awareness. She was way ahead of her time in the earth movement and made her students aware of man’s influences on the environment. Good teachers, as I look back really influenced me. I can remember the enjoyment of being challenged to learn and develop attitudes about life right from the beginning. Education was a core family value in our house. My father's parents grew up in northern New Jersey. My grandfather went to Harvard and was a dentist. My grandmother was from a respected and educated family. My dad was a sports enthusiast, which rubbed off on me at a young age. I played little league baseball and also made the school baseball team. I played in several “rec” basketball, bowling and golf leagues and I was always doing something surrounding athletics.

During my sophomore year, Coach Stowell invited to me to manage the Bradley University varsity basketball team. He suggested I could do several important things for the team in this capacity including being a full time tutor for the players when needed and acting as the official team photographer. Coach Stowell loved pictures and loved giving pictures away as gifts to benefactors of the program. For the next 3 years, I worked a 12 month year being the team student manager with all the various tasks such as preparing the gym and lockers for practices and road trips, cleaning up the locker room after practice, and other chores as delegated. Additionally, I made pictures for the team and University. In this capacity, I also traveled with the team and eventually visited Madrid where we played in a Christmas 1976 tournament

1978-1980
Because I had mono in August just before my freshmen year, I had to start Bradley in January 1975 and so I graduated December in1978. I was in no hurry to leave Peoria and I really had become very comfortable there and being on my own. I tried to unsuccessfully to break into the medical photography field after finishing Bradley and I interviewed all over Illinois including Chicago with Jack DeBruin. He suggested I might consider going back to school and attend RIT where I could learn the special skills required in this specialized field. he also suggested I should join the Biological Photographic Association. I was a bit stubborn and I was not ready to return to school again or go back to Utica, so I took a job with Charles Twing, the owner of Charles Twing Photographer and the Slide Factory. This was a fun job for me right out of college. Chuck was never there and so in a very short period of time, I became the day-to-day manager of his business. In fact, he had just rented a new space, so I became the designer/ renovator of the space as well as coordinated the move from the old building. The Slide Factory was a custom lab that processed E-6, made slide duplicates, processed and printed B & W films as well as copied paper documents onto slide film. It was a perfect job for me because it really built on skills I had been developing at the A-V services department at Bradley, except now the clients were companies like Caterpillar Tractor who paid real money for the work. So by day, I worked 10 hour shifts and at night I partied and photographed with my friends. Now almost 30 years later, I still maintain some friendships with the people who were so integral in my life including Kevin and Sherrie Schneider and Jerry and Gail Stowell, and of course Harry & Dee Erlichmann.

In the late summer of 1979, I decided working in a photo lab was not going to help me become a photographer and so I concluded I might be better prepared to act on new opportunities being on the East Coast. I once again applied to hospitals all across NY state for employment, including the University of Rochester where I was told by a supervisor there that medical photography was not the field for me. I was very frustrated in my inability to open any new doors, but just when I was most dejected, a door opened at Main Street Photography in Syracuse, NY. Main Street was owned by Bob Lorenz and managed by Lynn MacMahill. Bob hired me because he wanted to be able to develop E-6 film in house and I had extensive experience in that area. I loved being in a photography studio and my work took off in a new direction. The Studio did a lot of catalogue work for Gladding corporation as well as public relations work for the Syracuse New Times and Syracuse Stage. I was now making pictures while still developing film and run lab services.

I helped purchase a Colenta film processor and kept the chemistry in-control. I made some photographs as well keeping the studio clean and organized. It was awesome situation, except I was earning NO MONEY and I could not completely pay all of my bills, all of the time. My parents were very helpful but suggested this “life-style and career” might need to be re-examined if I could not support myself. I still maintained the dream that I could be a medical photographer and I decided to visit RIT where I met a real GURU of the field and my soon to be mentor - Nile Root. I begrudgingly applied after the visit because I still felt like I could make it on my own. There was no response from RIT from sometime and I continued with my work at MainStreet.

1980-1982
In early May of 1980, I received a letter from RIT sharing I was accepted into the summer transfer program which began June 1st. At first I was hesitant to accept this opportunity, and it took a lot of persuasion from my parents for me to see the advantages. I did enroll and immediately was engrossed in the most intense experience of my photographic life to date, the “summer transfer program”. This course ran Monday through Fridays 8am to 6 pm and replaced the entire 1st year curriculum. When finished, I would start the Fall session as a sophomore. This course was incredible for me on many levels. I was eating, breathing and sleeping photography and it was thoroughly consuming me as well. My work improved exponentially in a very short time. I was learning to control the processes of photography rather than being controlled by them. In that summer I met some people who still are central to my life including Gervase Pervarnik, the staff photographer at Wards Natural Science which is located here in Rochester. Gervase has influenced my photography in so many important ways. We immediately became “photo partners” that summer and we still are nearly so many years later.

When summer was over, the school year resumed in the Fall at a normal pace. I started to settle in and took a job with Mel Simon Inc, a custom color lab in town, where I processed E-6, C-41 and produced custom slide duplicates. I worked 20 hours a week for Mel at very unusual hours since my class schedule dictated when I was available. It is always fascinating to see how my life seemed to have reoccurring cycles. I continually found myself in a lab developing others films while I was working on becoming a photographer. While at this lab I did a lot of custom slide work for Xerox and fine art printing for a successful B & W artist in town.

Because I transferred to RIT with a BA degree, my schedule was very compressed. In fact, I only took photography classes while at RIT. I studied close-up photography, photomicrography, high speed photography and instrumentation, color theory, and so many other subjects during the next 30 weeks. In school, I studied with many giants in the field. I took courses from Les Stroebel, Richard Zakia, Ira Current, John Compton, Nile Root and Andrew Davidhazy to name a few. There were many other faculty with whom I studied, but this core group taught the classes that I was required to take as a Biomed major. Being in school was incredibly stimulating for me. I was exposed to great photographers such as Lennart Nilsson and Arnold Newman to name a few. Everyday there was something new to learn or do including how to make fine B & W prints when using the Ansel Adams zone system. I also was very fortunate to have access to a space that Gervase and I converted to home darkroom in the basement of long time family friend, Michael Lebowitz & Leslie Berkowitz. When my Mom was in her 30’s, she went back to college to become a teacher. While there, she met Michael who was a sophomore at Utica College. Michael and my Mom became good friends and he often visited our home for holidays. It was so ironic for me to end up in Rochester and be reconnected with him. This darkroom became my second home. It was in an old coal cellar in the basement and had a dirt floor. It was full of spiders and was a great space to print because of its isolation. In the 1.5 years that I had this space, I would guess I made no less than 2000 prints there.

In 1981, I met my wife, Laurie Greenberg who changed my life forever and I cannot begin to imagine life without her. Laurie was exciting and fun. She loved life. OUr chance meeting was fun. One Thursday evening after my night class I was at the bar and Laurie happened to be there with a broken leg and her friend. Laurie hobbled up to the bar and we hit it off right away. She has such a great wit and laugh. She immediately became a part of my life from our first chance meeting that night in February. We did everything together. She came to the darkroom with me, she went to the lectures and school events and became an important part of my life sharing the work and the emotional toll of being a full time adult student. I knew in a few months after that chance meeting that I had a new partner to share all my adventures that lied ahead.

As the summer of 1981 approached, I began organizing a work-study block, which was one of my degree requirements. I decided to apply to the Johns Hopkins Hospital to work at the pathology lab under the supervision of Raymond “Pete” Lund.

JHU was well known in the field and Pete was legendary for the lab he had built. I started the position in June 1981 and spent a very exciting summer working at path photo lab with my RIT lab partner, Larry Newell. Again by some strange coincidence, I met a future boss there, Larry Koffer. Larry was one of the supervisors in the department and we also hit it off right away. He had a great sense of humor and was a very hard worker. Our days in the lab were very intense because the lab promised all jobs would be done in one day or less. Every morning started with each employee rolling out a 100 foot bulk roll of film which made 18 - 36 exposures rolls. The lab produced slides, prints, and all services such as surgical photography, photomicrography and passports. It was a beehive of activity with people frantically trying to get all work out by 5. Baltimore was also a fun place to live, especially in a dormitory. I shared a room with Larry and we did a lot of sight seeing visiting the Inner Harbor, Washington DC, and Arlington VA that summer. I also met a very dear and long time colleague in Norman Barker, RBP who started his career that same summer at Hopkins where he is now the pahtology photography department director.

1982-1983
I completed my second degree in February 1982 and at the time, the U.S. economy was awful. I could not find a job anywhere. I must have sent out 200 resumes and no one was hiring. In the interim while I pressed on, I took a job selling cameras at Carhart Photo. It gave me some money and allowed me to keep an apartment in Rochester while I continued to look. In June of ’82, I interviewed, and was offered a position as the medical photographer for the Charleston division of the W.V.U. medical school and I moved to West Virginia where I worked for almost 2 years. I loved this job. I was the only medical photographer in the state and I provided all services in house. I had fantastic equipment there as well as in house color facilities. I was making pictures daily in surgery, in the clinic, and in the studio. I produced slides from hard copy as well as all the other services I had been doing since my days in the AV dept. job at Bradley.

In May of 1983, Laurie and I were married and she moved to Charleston. where we set up shop.

During my time at WVU, I became board certified as a biological photographer. This program supervised by the BPA, granted me my RBP, or registered biological photographer certificate and I won several awards for my scientific photography from the Nikon Small world competition and the BPA. While in Dallas Texas at a BPA meeting, I met Michael Sarnacki, who was from Detroit, Michigan. Before I going to Dallas for the meeting in August of '83, I had accepted a position with Henry Ford Hospital from Larry Koffer. Larry had left Hopkins in March of that year and was reorganizing the HFH dept. Since we had worked together in the summer of 1981, we already had a good chemistry before I started. I found it to be an incredible coincidence to have met Michael from Detroit in Dallas, 2 months before I moved to Detroit. Sometimes I think life is a series of events that are governed by some bigger plan. My life has seemed to be full of very fortunate coincidences.

In September of 1983, I moved to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan where I was the supervisor of the medical photography department. I worked with Larry Koffer who was the director of the large department of photography, graphics and medical television. The dept at the time had an operating budget of $700,000 and 15 employees. The photography section, produced more than 125,000 slides and 65,000 prints for educational and research applications. The department was located in 2 places, one space was in the hospital that produced all the patient pictures while the production lab was housed in another bldg where all the lab services were handled including E-6 processing. We also had a student training program where students could learn on the job and work towards their certification(RBP) exams. While at HFH, I had the pleasure to work with some exceptionally motivated and smart students where I experimented with teaching. During this time, I made several presentations, and continued to win numerous awards for my scientific photography.

While in Detroit, Laurie and I remained friendly with Michael and Jeanne Sarnacki. Michael and I were similar in that we were workaholics. Michael had founded the Michigan Friends of Photography, he ran a photo gallery in his own home and was very active in the arts. He worked a day job as a medical photographer at Oakwood Hospital and in the evenings, he did his art. Michael introduced me to the who’s who in Detroit photo art community and soon I was participating in art shows and festivals as well. One summer I was in Art festivals in Ann Arbor, Birmingham and Pontiac Michigan as well as the Cornhill Arts Festival in Rochester, N.Y. I still stay in touch with Michael who has stayed very active in his own business as well the serving as executive director of the Detroit Focus project.

In January 1986, Nile Root , my former RIT mentor, wrote me a short note sharing there was going to be a faculty position in the imaging and photo tech dept and that he thought I should apply. In late March I traveled back to RIT where I interviewed in front of the same faculty that just 5 years earlier was my teachers. It was strange to say the least and rather intimidating. Later that month I received an offer to be an instructor in the IPT department which I accepted and in the next month Nile announced his plans for retirement and I was a little disappointed in that I could apply to be in Biomed. The director of the school, Tom Iten would not discuss the idea with me and that was that. In the summer of ‘86, I again participated in the Cornhill Arts festival before moving to Rochester and I ran into Martin Scott from Eastman Kodak. Martin was the director of scientific imaging at Kodak and an important advisor to the school. I shared my small frustration at not being assigned to Biomed.

As we were preparing to move to Rochester in mid August, the phone rang. The call was from the Biomed dept head, Bill DuBois asking me if I would consider transferring to his dept. Without hesitation, I was on board with the idea. In August of 1986, without having an interview, I was transferred as an instructor into the Biomedical Photographic Communications department.

Fast forward more than 20 years.
Teaching at RIT has been quite a journey and one that is difficult to describe. In fact, I think teaching is a difficult thing to describe in general. You know when good teaching has occured but it is hard to describe. No two good teachers operate the same way. During my first few years, I was consumed with the basic issues all new teachers experience as well as being terrified I would make a mistake. Developing new courses as well as the required teaching materials was a lot of work. This job was and is harder than I ever imagined. I was very lucky to be befriended by some valuable friends who helped make the path easier to travel and I am forever grateful to them for their constant help, guidance and contributions during my formative years. These special people would include Martin Scott who was a frequent benefactor and guest lecturer to my classes; Roger Loveland whose vast knowledge about the microscope was truly inspiring was freely shared when I was just starting out; H.L.Gibson whose help while producing a manuscript for my first chapter in a technical book established a new confidence I desperately needed; Jack Vetter’s invitation to write the Close Up and Photomacrography Chapter in the Biomedical Photography book he edited was an incredible coup in my new career; Sally Robson constant offering of encouragement, guidance and resources as my career evolved; and Leon LeBeau and Michael Coppinger who visited my Photo 2 classes for more than 14 years sharing their passion for laboratory photography as well as ophthalmic photography respectively. The BPA was also an important organization for me because of the contacts I made and it was place where I could really practice presenting and publishing. Teaching at the Annual Rochester workshop, speaking at the Annual meeting and publishing in the Journal were valuable actvities in my professional development.