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BIOGRAPHY

My life reads like a person diagnosed with attention-deficit-disorder. The bonding agent to my dysfunction is photography, which has glued my life together since childhood.

My  first memory of wanting to become a photographer happened when I was only 7 years old and living in San Francisco. My mother was holding a Kodak box camera the size of a shoe box. She focused on her 3 boys.  To snap the picture, a metal lever had to be depressed down a long, two-inch slot on the right side of the black box. My mother kept fiddling with the camera until I finally shouted out in exasperation, "Just take the picture!"
She looked up and said, "If you know so much, you do it."

Thus a career was born.

 I grew up in California when it was rural and the open spaces beyond the city of San Francisco were an adventurous world of wildlife. From the beginning, my photography was focused on nature. Probably because the first time I saw a wild bird, a pheasant, in Woodland, California, I  marveled at the fact that it could survive in the world of man. Repeatedly, I marvel at the survival skills of animals.

I  graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and volunteered for the war in Vietnam where I had the opportunity to take some transparencies of Vietnam as an platoon leader in a mechanized unit of the 5th/60th/ 9th Infantry Division, during Tet 1968. I was awarded the silver star and purple heart for gallantry in action, (unfortunately not for the pictures of my infantry platoon). I wrote a couple of books about the subject and I am still living under the shadows of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, especially at night when I am tired and I am not sure where I am.

After the war, my friends said I fled to Alaska, where I photographed the log houses I built and the wildlife that surrounded me.  I traveled to 48 villages, taking pictures of the native traditions and subsistence lifestyle.  On the island of  Kodiak, I filmed the fisheries, bald eagles, brown bears, elk, deer, and stupendous vistas.  

Taking advantage of an opportunity to move to Bermuda to thaw out, my photography focused on  Nonsuch island, Cooper island nature park (which I helped create), the nearly exstinct cahow birds, and the beautiful beaches.

 Now living in Key West, the sunsets and panoramas, the fishing, secluded beaches, and yes,  the wildlife on Duval street are targets of my focus. I travel extensively to Central and South America to photograph their budding economies, thriving cultures, and spectacular landscapes.   

CREDITS:

I have sold my work on every continent in the world. My images have been in magazines such as National Wildlife, International Wildlife, Alaska magazine, Alaska Native News, Alaska Sportsman, Alaska Geographics, and nearly every publication with the word Alaska in the title. My images have been placed on billboards, posters,  greeting cards, postcards, calendars, portfolios, annual reports, in text books and newspapers, financial services, travel cataloges, TV magazines, CD sleeve, and reference books. 20 years of sales thru my photo agency, Getty images.

EQUIPMENT:

   I have been a Nikon man all my life, straying only once with a Mamiya medium format camera.

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