Biography
Photojournalism has been a calling for over 20 years. Serving as witness, and serving the public’s right to know, remains a central tenet of my personal work.
From 1990 to 2004 I served six daily newspaper staffs from The Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky; The Dallas Morning News, Texas; The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri; The Albany Herald and The Augusta Chronicle, Georgia; to The King County Journal, Washington.
Additional assignments through The Associated Press, Black Star Publishing, Corbis and Zuma Press, have resulted in my work being published throughout the world on television, radio, and in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, TIME, Newsweek, US News and World Report, Smithsonian, Mother Jones, Stern, Der Spiegel, People, MSNBC, The Seattle Times, The Seattle P-I, The Puget Sound Business Journal, Philanthropy, and others. Recent stories have taken me to Cuba and the 2010 Haitian earthquake.
Clients include Microsoft, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, T-Mobile, Seattle University, Medical Teams International, and Providence Health Systems. Their assignments and annual reports have required me to document corporate culture in Beijing to hospices in Seattle.
I continue an association with syndicates Zuma Press and Polaris Images.
Early on, while completing graduate work at the University of Missouri School of Journalism (1992), I assisted studio photographers in St. Louis where I honed lighting techniques for two years. Several of these studios held major Purina and Anheuser Busch advertising accounts where gigs consisted of everything from puppies and puppy chow to fashion.
In 1994 I moved to South Georgia where I continued to cut my teeth as Chief Photographer for The Albany Herald. Soon thereafter, while at The Augusta Chronicle, I was recognized at the prestigious Atlanta Photojournalism Conference as Georgia’s Newspaper Photographer of the Year (1996). That portfolio simultaneously received third place nationally for a documentary work on a paramilitary-style juvenile prison, as well as my coverage of a conservative, snake handling church in rural north Georgia.
Through 2004 I consistently produced award-winning work in News, Features, Sports and Portrait categories as awarded by The Associated Press, The National Press Photographer’s Association and the Society of Professional Journalists. From 2000-2004 I helped the Journal win regional Sweepstakes Awards three out of four years as awarded by the Society of Professional Journalists.
During this period stories were also produced from Israel and the Palestinian territories, Kosovo, Nicaragua and El Salvador, while accompanying nurses and surgeons who themselves were serving medical relief organizations. Hence my partnerships with Medical Teams International, Mercy Corps, Medical Teams Worldwide, Physicians for Peace, World Relief, and others.
In 2005, sensing the decline in print journalism, I left daily journalism to pursue personal work and, with the explosion of social media and the web, I am today incorporating the use of sound in multimedia storytelling.
I continue to photograph social, political and environmental issues affecting our daily lives.
Deadlines are my friends.
Visual stories with impact are my craft.
I remain rooted in Seattle.
For all assignments or client inquiries, including references and pricing, please write:
Thank you.
sms