I have lived and traveled up and down California, and currently reside in Mammoth Lakes, a prime central location for accessing some of the most celebrated views on the planet. I was born and raised in Los Altos, California, and grew up appreciating local nature through Scouts. When I was a Cub Scout I was always interested in the longer nature trips. Hikes and overnights were what I looked forward to the most. When I transitioned to Boy Scouts, summer camp in the Sierra was something I continued even after reaching the rank of Eagle Scout. My parents left a firm impression on me on how to take vacations. You get in a car, drive for hours, and end up at a campsite. We went to national parks all over the west, from North Cascades all the way down to Death Valley.

When I appreciate something, I go down the rabbit hole. I’ve had several obsessions over the course of my life, but the two that have had the depth for long-term study were biology paired with psychology and photography. I was an apathetic student and didn’t begin to apply myself until I started trying to make sense of the

complex machinery of living things. I would carry around my notes and interweave ideas together until they made sense. I was excited to add to the connections I had already made. I wanted to want to add to the body of knowledge through my own research, but the actual slog of collecting data didn’t tickle the right part of my brain. Then I found photography. The first sunrise I photographed wasn’t special, but the choices were both limitless and limited. Where to point, how much to show, and what to focus on were all my choice. Creating an image without damaging the image’s inhabitants was limiting. All moments happen once, but which ones are worth looking at more than once? These challenges have taken over nearly all my free time in the last fifteen years.

My introverted nature took some time for me to understand, but I eventually figured out that nature is how I truly recoup my energy. If I don’t go out into nature I feel drawn and worn. My interest in nature and science brought me to a career as a high school biology teacher at Gunn High School, and this allowed me to spend a few weeks in the summer every year hiking in the backcountry of the Sierra. I left my high school teaching job two years ago to pursue landscape photography fulltime, focusing on the Sierra and teaching other photographers how to improve their photography.