2325 1st Avenue North: Philip Griffith Photography Studio

My Aunt Martha gave me my first camera.  A salesman at Service Merchandise convinced her she needed a complicated SLR, but she could never even figure out how to load it with film and was always turning to me for help.  Eventually the camera just moved in with me, and she ended up with a point-and-shoot that I still had to load for her.

I went to college at Birmingham-Southern but never took any art classes.  I have a B.A. in English and history.

A Utah photographer named Bruce Hucko inspired me to take photography seriously.

I took a few UAB Special Studies classes before the program died.  Kim Riegel, Ken Boyd, and Pat Dagg were my teachers.

The panoramic photos were taken with a 45mm lens on a Hasselblad Xpan.  The rest were taken with a 28mm Voigtländer lens on a Leica M6.  Stuff like that is interesting to other photographers.

I’m not obsessive like Garry Winogrand, but I try to follow his compositional strategy of paying attention to what gets in the frame and not worrying about anything else.

I still shoot film.