I was given my first camera when I was in 7th grade. It was as much a fashion accessory as a functioning camera. I took it everywhere—to school, to parties, soccer games, the pool, the lake, skiing, wherever. I shot my friends, our cars, our girlfriends. I traveled before and throughout college and continued to shoot: Europe and Eastern Europe, South America, Central America and Egypt.
          After graduating with a degree in English, from the University of Washington, I met a photographer who turned me on to a book called, “In Our Time — The World As Seen By Magnum Photographers.” I immediately realized that I wanted to be a photojournalist. I wanted to live in New York or Paris, travel around the world, experience the world through a camera, meet artists, writers and thinkers.
          I initially attended Parsons, in New York and then transferred to Art Center College, where the photographer James Fee took me and two other students under his wing. He sold us vintage cameras, taught us his developing and printing techniques, took us on shoots and “field-trips.” When he looked through my fifty rolls from South Africa, he circled two frames and said, “go print these.” He refused to tell me why he chose only two frames.
          What James essentially taught me was that the negative was about 50% of any image, assuming it was a good image to begin with. He always said we could direct the viewer and show them what we, as photographers, wanted them to see. We heavily burned and dodged, printed too dark, and toned everything. Things changed for me when I took this same approach and applied it to my color photography. Color became everything for me. The mood of my early images was always more important than the subject of the image itself.
          After graduating from Art Center in 1997, I got my first commercial assignment from Nan Oshin, Creative Director of the Los Angeles Times Magazine followed by many more assignments for that magazine.
          I moved to New York in 1999 and then decided to travel to Cuba where I spent four weeks wandering around. I shot about 300

rolls of film, using a Rolleiflex and 100 frames of sheet film, using a 1913 Graflex 4x5. When I returned to New York, I printed two portfolios containing 60 images each. This body of work essentially launched my career in New York.
          I was shooting many different subjects for many different magazines: Lifestyles for Oprah, Real Simple, Organic Style, and Budget Living; businessmen for Fortune, Money, Smart Money and Worth; food and travel for Saveur and Gourmet, as well as Gardens for Garden Design, Organic Gardening and LA Times Magazine.
The following year, eight images from Cuba and Iceland were published in American Photography 17. I also won a Society of Publication Designers award as well as an award for Communication Arts and was profiled in Photo District News.
          Based on the images published in American Photography, Outside Magazine called in my portfolios. I spent one month in Mozambique, paddling the last uncharted river in Africa. We traveled by Cessna, Land Rover, and kayaks, in the hippo and crocodile infested Lugenda River.
          One month later, Outside sent me to the Republic of Georgia, for another month. This was followed by a trip paddling balsa-wood rafts down the Amazon, (for a month), trekking through 15000 ft peaks in Tibet, (for a month), and a trip across the Northwest Passage on an Icebreaker.
          I finally met Rob Haggart, then Photography Director of Outside Magazine. Over drinks in the East Village in New York, after a hand shake, he looked to me and said, “You know, when we have a crazy assignment we’re not sure anyone else will take, we always call you, because we know you’ll say Yes!” These assignments were amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, which were equally personal as much as commercial.
          Luckily similar assignments followed from other adventure magazines.