Who is Ezra Ekman?
Call it tough love, or call it insight. Whatever it was, it worked.
When I was about 7 years old, my mother decided to try something a little unorthodox when I'd get into trouble. (Which, granted, wasn't an altogether unlikely occurrence.) She would send me to my room, and wouldn't let me out until I'd "created" something. She wasn't specific as to what - it could be a poem, calligraphy, watercolor, a sketch or a musical composition - but she required that I make something new before I was allowed out. I suppose that's what really got me started.
Several years later, my father introduced me to photography and commercial design. He taught me that you can make almost anything that you can buy... and that what you create will probably be better. He also taught me how to teach, and how to learn. That's what kept me going.
I've been designing commercially for clients since I was twelve years old. I started on Adobe Photoshop when it was in version 2, and have been hand-coding HTML since before Internet Explorer was released. I am somewhat obsessed with usability and user experience design, am an early adopter of technology, and tend to look for ways to improve things when I'm bored.
In essence, I love to build and create things. Web sites, user interfaces, design and development, front-end and back-end. Creativity and technical know-how, imagery and code. I love it all!