"The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives to keep on looking."
-Brooks Atkinson
MY
STORY
My love of the ocean began when I was very young, as my family lived aboard a 22 foot catboat for much of the summer and sailed the NorthEast coast. I somehow managed to catch my first bluefish on a handline at age three, and have been a fanatical fisherman ever since. Saltwater will always bring back the best of my memories.
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When I was 17, I spent what savings I had on my first real camera. I traveled to central Africa, then to South Africa on a high school exchange program. The wildlife surpassed anything I'd ever imagined, with the Mountain Gorillas at the juncture of Rwanda, Uganda, and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) being a highlight experience. At that point, I realized that few things in life would ever hold a candle to the wilder side of nature.
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"Traveling seems to have shifted my focus from the broad to the particular, and focused my eye on the merit of progressively simpler things."
I graduated college with a B.A. in English literature, and set off for Asia with the hope of writing a travelogue of sorts. After exploring Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand, I found a sailboat looking for crew, and sailed across the Indian Ocean. In the Red Sea, the ship caught on fire and went down, along with my camera, numerous rolls of film, and 350 pages of manuscript.
Though I've been photographing seriously for over thirty years, it wasn't until the late 90's that I decided to become a full-time artist. Oddly enough, traveling seems to have shifted my interest from the broad to the particular, and focused my eye on the merit of progressively simpler things. Beauty, adventure, and epiphany are all forever at our doorstep. I feel enormously fortunate to be able to combine my passions with my livelihood.
"What I dream of is an art of balance..."
-Henri Matisse