Origin

I am lujio

In 1976 I opened my eyes for the first time in the greatest city of all. New Orleans, Louisiana. At nine and a half pounds I came out by cesarian with an addiction to McKenzie's Pastries (and the ability to kill Macbeth, but I digress) since apparently that was my mom's craving when she was pregnant. She'd buy two cakes with plain sugar icing, would eat one on the way back home with my older brother in tow, and save the other one for after dinner. I'm not sure how many times a week she did this, but it was probably very often. She tells me all the sugar was to make sure I came out sweet and loving, which she'll testify it worked out as planned.

Apparently no one told her after I was born I became Hypoglycemic, and was in a tricky spot for a while there. But I made it, and to this day you'll find a big smile on my face if I have a loaf of plain cake sponge in my hands (or rather in my mouth).

In terms of Photography, I recall always wanting to be the photographer. since I was a child I'd take my mom's point and shoot and take photos, many which I probably never saw. That I recall, she had a Kodak Disc 4000 that was brilliant, what a great little machine that was. Later on came one I loved getting my hands on any chance I got, a Canon Photura —circa 1990.

With a 35-105mm zoom lens, and it's oddly futuristic shape, the Photura was a compromise between the SLR and the point-and-shoots of the time. In 1994, I took it with me in an expedition to the San Blas jungle and archipelago which I was a part of. Named 'Operation New World,' students and teachers from the US and Britain, led by a retired British Colonel came to Panama to explore the jungle and learn about the history and conditions conquistadors had experienced. I was the only high-school student out of 6 Panamanians invited to join the expedition.

My dad recalls I was around five or six years old; growing up in Panama, when I started saying I was going to be the family photographer. I don't remember how old I was when I started saying that (he's probably right) but I definitely remember it too. At some point in my teens, I found my dad's old Asahi Pentax and his K1000, and with the help of the 1970s Life Photography Books collection, he became my first teacher. Photography had been his hobby back in medical school, around (or before) the time I was born. He has the most amazing medical slides from that era, slides he made himself to document strange cases, images you'd be hard-pressed to come by today. A contribution to history. A record.

Not much longer after I started playing with his treasures did he buy me my very own first SLR camera. A Nikon FM10 with a 35-70mm zoom lens; this was around the time I was heading back to New Orleans to attend Tulane. At the same time he bought himself a Nikon F4 (which I later 'inherited' with the release of the F5, and still own), and thus my claim of getting him back into photography after such a long hiatus. I am happy to report that he is still an avid and fantastic photographer to this day.

I also remember, must have been around either the fourth or fifth grade, what could be construed as my first outing as a landscape photographer —though only more recently and in retrospect do I realize what I was going through. It was at summer camp; my older cousin used to organize all sort of educational extracurriculars first for me and my cousins, then bigger and bigger (she later started her own, now amazing, private school). I must have been nine or ten years old. My mom send me out there with one of those magical Kodak disposable cameras, probably no more than twenty-four shots per camera (but duplicate prints). Part of the activities we'd do with the camp counselors (my cousin and her friends, all teachers and educators now) was long hikes up the surrounding mountains, and up there on the edges of an old dormant volcanic crater I shot the incredible lines I saw the mountain ranges make, the long running grassy fields that met the sky towards the horizon, and who knows what other terrible landscape shots I took back then.

The first camera filled up rather quick and I sent it home to get developed and to ask for a new one. I got the new camera with a message from my annoyed (I say that lovingly) mother not to waste valuable film shooting mountains and to take some pictures of my friends.

Sadly the photos did not reflect what I saw, the lens was plastic of course, there was no exposure control to speak of, and the 1-hour developing service used at the pharmacy had no desire to pull out of the negatives the beautiful skies while maintaining the details on the mountain sides.

It was some time before I learned to develop my own film and prints, before I learned to expose for shadows or highlights depending on what film I used. Years before I fell in love with the smell of developers, fixers, and the long hours under dim deep orange lights pulling out the image I saw from the negatives I took. Yea, my best memories of darkrooms where at Tulane where my friend was a photography TA and our Teacher and Mentor Arthur Okazaki would let us stay in after hours with the lab all to ourselves, sometimes walking out of there at four or five in the morning.

It was here, once I was back in New Orleans, that I realized how much I liked looking at the world through an SLR viewfinder. I was now studying architecture and my inclination towards the camera became known amongst my teachers and peers rather quickly, and I found it to be not only an important analytical tool in my architectural process, but recognized it's importance to documentation, and began to see it for it's significance in contributing to the historical record.