I was trained as a photographer and one job I would have loved doing is being a photojournalist. But to me, that term should have been, headshot photographer as most photojournalists take assignments. There have been a few photojournalists to lend their eye and actually record events, which figured into other people's articles.

As a senior and photography student at Parkville Senior High School, I inquired with the Baltimore Sunpapers about going out on a shoot with one of their photojournalists and was paired up with Henry Mortimer. He pretty much laid out the photojournalist's responsibility as described. It was not only a wonderful day, but one filled with more realistic education about the job then a year of courses could teach.

Also, I was dealt a surprise with Mr. Mortimer, he split up his assignments and gave me half of his. We went to three places and one place was closed. At the end of the day, we processed the film and made our prints, and he submitted mine to the editors as well, with the warning that the editors may have their own ideas and disappoint you because their cropping may disappoint you and destroy the artistry of the shot.

To my shock one of my photographs was published with the story, but it was for the Arundal County insert, so I wasn't able to buy scores of them to rub it in and agitate my classmates. Wanting to be a National Geographic or Life Magazine Photographer, I thought the Naval School for Photography would be best, but the recruiter wouldn't answer my questions and acted enough like a jerk, I decided not to pursue it any further. I ended up going to the Rhode Island School of Photography, but with not landing a job for the summer, settled into a career working for a sheet-fed printing firm back in Baltimore.

I did get into Nature Photography for about six years, but that was more of an artistic endeavor, which was a hard business to penetrate with any degree of success; not to mention nature really doesn't cooperate and one can not devote enough time to their nature photography to yield many successes. All that equipment has to be paid off with a job. I often joked that I was coming up with more adventurous stories then actual photographs.

Still I always kept in mind the photojournalistic aspect that I wanted to develop with myself. I did get into writing, but it wasn't journalism, it was poetry. My first poem that I didn't rip up and throw away was about the emotions and reasons that I got into caving. I was amazed how this actually worked out well, because I turned to poetry out of the sheer frustration, because all my caving stories were doing was convincing everyone that I was crazy.

Then a second poem to try to get a developing step-daughter to realize not only the love that a father has for his daughter, but the understanding as well. But understanding with her was there and every copy seemed to disappear from the house costing about $200.00 to retrieve a copy from the Library of Congress.

The third was the charm that really got me writing, also a doozy as it was about expressing love and regret to a woman who worked at the shop before she left to pursue her career. Let's put it this way... It cost me dearly and almost destroyed me from a financial aspect; yet it opened up the world to me in such and adventurous and rewarding way. I also have met so many wonderful, but "issue," oriented people.

I found a wonderful platform or intrigue and challenge and developed the love and skills of mixing the various talents I was hoping to develop, and Mike's Moments are just another facet.

Mike's Moments started somewhat as a joke as I do needle the Baltimore Sun from time to time. I just up and decided to write a column, which was easy to do with a little word counting research. I couldn't help but needle the editors again, so I also included a proposal to become a columnist for them.

I figured that I would get a chuckle, but not a response from them, but to my surprise they replied back and while they said they were satisfied with their columnist's and didn't have any openings for that job, they invited me to submit my works to them as op-eds. A bit shocked and much honored.

I decided not only to take them up on that, but to post them in my electronic portfolio at FanStory for all to be able to view. With working the way that I do, and also loving to write in the whisps of time that I can obtain, I can't shop the op-eds out the way that one should. Though the Baltimore Sun has first consideration, my op-eds will be posted on FanStory so I can send the links to people that may appreciate or carry them.

I noticed with most newspapers, columnist's seem to be fairly compartmentalized in to categories such as political, social, food... Just as with my other talents, I plan to blend the writings into pieces that are uniquely me!

Mike!