Interviewer: “Tony, talk to me about your background and your experience.”

Tony: I actually started in seventh grade when I was in Pennsylvania.  When I was a little older I found a photographer who was looking for someone to work with, to train.  And I had very basic knowledge because I come from a school yearbook situation, but he hired me and took me under his wing and taught me a lot of things.  Eventually, he had me doing weddings, and he was involved with some fashion photography as well. I kind of dabbled a little bit with everything back then in the Midwest in my teen years.  And then I moved back to California and landed in Yorba Linda. I met several photographers there and got involved with what they called the PPOC, the Professional Photographers of Orange County.  That’s where a lot of the peers were going to on  monthly meetings and  competitions and different things along those lines.  I took it to another level and got involved with the Board that they have.  And then back in the early 90’s, I became the President of the organization and did that for two terms.  it allowed me to get a feel for what was going on back then in the industry  — who was good and who was up and coming.

And I was fortunate enough to get involved with a lot of photographers, see people from across the country because of the PPOC. I was fortunate enough to meet some very very good photographers back then…

One of them was Monte Zucker.  He was just an amazing photographer with lighting and studio pictures and understanding how to photograph a person and get the right angles of their face and studying the person’s face and being able to know what the best angle for them is and how to light it properly and to make these pictures really flatter the person, whether it’s their hairstyle or their eyes.  Monte Zucker was a master at that.  And so I learned with him and he helped me to learn a style that was really unique, but also understand the technical part of photography:  the lighting aspect has so much more to it, with learning how to photograph a person and the angles that you wanna work with.

And then I had the pleasure of meeting David Peters. He was a master at outdoor portraits with family and couples.  He had a way of being able to talk to his clients. He called use to say “everyone kind of goes around in life with a shell on and it’s very difficult to get inside of it.” We speak a lot in terms of just everyday stuff to people and everyday talk but we don’t really get the essence of who the person is. His goal was really to get into the heart of the person prior to the photo shoot,   to be able to find out who they were, what they were all about and really what the connection was with the person or persons that they were with and start asking the right kinds of questions to these people.  He’d speak much more from the heart.  He had ways of being able to talk to people and trying to develop a piece of art for the client… as opposed to just a photograph.  So that when you’re looking at the images that he would take, often times they would be images that really would be capturing an emotion, capturing a spirit in your heart and not so much about just documenting “look at the camera”, and smiling for the camera.  And so that was really nice to be able to get a taste of what he did, cause he was amazing…

So between Monte Zucker’s technical part in learning how to sculpture a face and David Peters’ outdoor environmental style that was so beautiful and elegant, the way he talked to people – that’s how those two people were able to develop where I wanted to go with my photography:  whether it was weddings or fashion.

I started to do wedding photography and it was very natural for me to be able to bring out the best in them and capture their feelings and emotions in a way that I’ve learned from David Peters and Monte Zucker… and just for me developing as an artist and as a person and really having the compassion for people. And so by being able to develop those paths for my own, I was able to quickly move into a role and say, “Okay, this is what I wanna do”…