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Larry Coleman was born in the small farming community of Vidalia, Georgia. When he was young his family moved to Massachusetts and then later to Alabama, but eventually returned to Vidalia when Larry was in middle school. This is where Larry would fall in love with the great outdoors where he could be found many weekends deep in the cypress swamps that makeup much of that part of the state.

Larry’s love of photography dates back to the late  sixties when he helped his father develop B&W negative film and print those to photographic paper in a makeshift darkroom his father had set up in an upstairs bathroom of their home. To this day Larry does not remember if his assistance in this darkroom was a willing participation or a requirement, but acknowledges that this was the spark that ignited his interest in photography. In the early seventies Larry’s father gave him his old hand-me-down Honeywell Pentax 35mm camera that he had purchased years earlier from a news reporter who had used it for many years. The old camera had no light meter or any of the other conveniences that even at that time could be found on new cameras. Once again, Larry praises his father’s move as one that taught him the fundamentals of photography.

Larry graduated from college with a B.S. degree in Criminal Justice. At first he worked in his family’s beverage distribution business but soon decided to pursue a career in law enforcement. For the next ten years Larry rose through the ranks from patrolmen to detective and finally worked as an undercover narcotics officer in a larger city in Georgia. During that time he also worked for over a year as a task force officer with the Drug Enforcement Administration. Eventually he moved to Tucson, Arizona where he worked for the Aviation Branch of U.S. Customs pursuing major air borne drug smugglers attempting to fly drugs into the United States through Mexico.

During all his early years, through high school, college, and eventually law enforcement, Larry continued to devote every minute that he could to his love of photography. He even gave several courses over time to other law enforcement officers in the use of a camera in crime scene photography. Fellow officers and friends remember him as the guy who always had a camera within arms’ reach, both on and off duty.

By 1989 Larry had made the decision to leave law enforcement and return to Vidalia, Georgia to work in the family wholesale beverage distribution business that he had grown up around. He continued in this business until his retirement in 2007.

Somewhere around 2001, Larry, like many other photographers, moved to the new world of digital photography. He had religiously stored and cataloged his collection of negatives and positive film (35mm Slides) that he had accumulated for thirty years and when he finally completed the slow process of scanning and digitizing this collection of film even he was a little surprised that he had accumulated over thirty thousand images. Today Larry’s collection totals over sixty thousand images that span the last thirty-nine years. The amazing story is that this collection was taken by an amateur photographer who has never received any formal training or sold any of his work to the general public. Larry’s collection is a unique look at one man’s travel through life with a camera at his side. His work reflects how he sees the world around him and those things that impress him enough to make him push the shutter button of his camera.

In 2014, after six years of retirement and several trips back to Arizona, Larry and his wife made the big decision to move to the northern

 part of that state. Larry looks at the move as putting him right in the middle of a photographer’s dream land where some of the greatest natural wonders are within a day’s drive.

2017 marked the year Larry Coleman entered the demanding and competitive world of professional photography by presenting his works to the general public for the first time ever through his new photography gallery located in charming Old Town Cottonwood, Arizona.

Be sure to click on the tab marked “Aperture Gallery Store” and visit Larry’s new photography gallery.