While early childhood friends always remember me with a camera in my hand, in January 1967 I enrolled in a beginning photography class at the University of New Mexico taught by Cavalier Ketchum and I was hooked. Van Dern Coke had just started the photography department at UNM and was putting together an excellent program which still continues today.

In December I happened to mention to Van Dern Coke that I was going out to Big Sur and Carmel over Christmas break. “Oh,” he said, “Stop and see Ansel. Take your portfolio.” I went to California, called Ansel, spent the afternoon with him and began an education into the excellence of print making. When Ansel would come to New Mexico we would occasionally get together for an evening at Laura Gilpin’s house in Santa Fe.

Under such instructors as Cavalier Ketchum, Wayne Lazoric, Richard Rudasill, the photographic historian Beaumont Newhall at UNM, and evenings with Ansel and Laura, I became a student of photography which lasts to this day.

Dick Spas