However he was always in love with imagery and he tried again buying a camera on his first major trip to Europe and North Africa when he was 18. When he came back with more negatives than he could afford to process (it took 2 years), two of his father's friends (photographers Nancy Crampton and Jack Feder) invited him to join them in The Village Camera Club. Here he met some of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century including Eugene Smith, Andre Kertesz, Ralph Gibson, Ernst Haas, Roman Vishniac and many others. These encounters and critiques set him on a lifelong path.