Michael James has been shooting photographs since he was 9 years old (he purchased his first 35mm camera the Fall of the first year of his first job, delivering papers). At 13 he was shooting many subjects including a 12 year old named Tony Hawk. He continued shooting regularly through jr. high & high school with journalism, yearbook and photo classes.

After high school it took a few years till he believed he was skilled enough to enable him with the ability to satisfy his appetite for living and need for the real life (a career). By 1991 he had spent 2 years in college learning the technical skill and understanding of the camera obscura, the inverse square root law of light fall off, the limits and adeptness of films, perspective corrected/yaw free large format photography and why strobes are made with capacitors.

So at 24 he sought out work. At this time the typesetting & graphic design community were experiencing rapid change. Michael knew photography was next. His first real encounter with the world of photographic digital imaging was November 92 with Kodak's advent of the PhotoCD. At that time even a 386 DX40 with 4MB Ram was fast (and expensive!). So with his mentor & friend Matthew Kiwala, (http://www.magicink.com) to sponge info on computers from, and the needs of promoters who were willing to pay for graphically intense fliers, Michael began a path down the unconventional.

In October of 95, after another revelation of confidence (and a small investment) he opened Photo-Synthesis. The direction of this effort was to enable image creation and publishing with new technology. The foundation was simple: get client direct work through multiple services.

The path has been quite an education and has only just begun.

With the turn of the millennium Michael's plans are to concentrate more on his first love of photography. With the publishing of Michael James Image to market his skills for even more assignment work as well as to distribute and publish his stock files of over 30,000 images shot over the last 20 years.