SIERRA LODESTAR -- “Ansel Adams, Edward and Brett Weston and other West Coast photographers were becoming popular,” Phaling said of the time. “Street photographers were making a mark. I wanted to do that as well. I attended San Francisco State University as a fine arts major with an emphasis in photography and modern art.”
“It was a new time for photography,” he continued, “a time when photography entered the fine art arena. After some ventures working as a studio photographer and wedding photographer, I concentrated solely on my personal photography projects, earning my living in Silicon Valley and then as a tennis instructor. Of course, the ‘burbs’ were a vast wasteland for art types. I could not be inspired by the commercial world of photographing PC boards and nuts and bolts. I only wanted to do photography for myself. It was my art form. And that was that.”