Some of us require many years of searching before we find where our natural talents lay buried.
I studied Aquatic Biology at UC Santa Barbara because I love science and working outdoors. After three years of grinding through classes like organic chemistry, physiology, genetics, physics and calculus we finally got out onto the water for a biology lab. It was here I discovered my failing as a marine biologist: I get sea sick something fierce.
So after college I got a job purifying proteins at the biotech company, Genentech. It was boring work, but paid the bills and after six years there, the company lets people take a paid sabbatical. I went to Australia for three months.
My trip to Australia is the reason I'm now a photographer. Starting a year before leaving I bought my first real camera, a Nikon N90 and started shooting tons of pictures of friends and landscapes. Just before going, I read the book "Galen Rowell's vision: the art of adventure photography" and went to a lecture on the Okavango Delta by Frans Lanting. The combination of the book, the lecture and the trip converted me to becoming a photographer.
After coming home, I went back to school at San Francisco State to study photojournalism. Learning photography became, and remains, my creative passion. My mind was like an information sponge. All it would take was looking at a picture in a magazine for me to memorize the picture and add it to my growing mental library of images.
I left Genentech in the fall of 1996 and immediately had the lucky break everyone hopes for in this business. Some classmates invited me to drive them to
Northridge, in Southern California, for a debate between a white supremist and an affirmative action proponent. What ensued was the best spot news event I've ever seen: helicopters buzzing, batons cracking heads, rubber bullets being shot, people running and screaming, fist fights. I found myself right at home. In the middle of this, a guy standing next to me started crossing a police line and I got the shot of him getting a face full of pepper spray.
That picture won a major national award and became the cornerstone of my portfolio. It's still in my portfolio 14 years later.
My first job, an internship which led to a job later in the summer, was at the Telegraph Herald in Dubuque, Iowa. It was great fun driving all over the tri-state area along the Mississippi River, meeting people and telling their stories.
Living in the Dubuque for three years will always fill my mind with great memories. One of my favorite memories is getting to fly in one of the last flying WWII 
B-29 bombers and doing a picture of it's shadow on the Mississippi River. Other memories include some of the crazy after work parties with my newspaper friends.
I love the news and working for newspapers is, in my opinion, the absolute best training anyplace for being a photographer. News photographers can shoot any assignment and walk away with great images every time. You have to be the best to get a job at a newspaper, and you have to stay sharp to keep the job. I wouldn't trade my experience at newspapers for any other experience or training in photography.
After spending three years in Dubuque the Bend Bulletin hired me in 2000. Since working here, I've won many more awards and have learned about a different place in America. Ranching, forest fires, rodeos and white water kayaking are all new experiences, along with many others, for me to photograph.
A couple years after arriving, I began shooting central Oregon weddings. Being a wedding photographer has taught me to see a different side of the journalism business. After doing a few, I came to appreciate the work as a new creative outlet and really enjoy doing them. One thing I really love is the people in the wedding all want the photographer to be there doing pictures.
Starting about four years ago, I joined forces with another wedding photographer, Todd Martyn-Jones, who is a former newspaper photographer from Sydney, Australia. We have a great time doing weddings together and most of my portfolio is mixed in with his on his website. We're also featured on the Central Oregon Weddings website.
Since then, I met my partner Mary Carroll, an Irishwoman working here in Bend and we had our baby, Eimear, on New Year's Eve of 2009. We love being together, skiing together, watching movies, running, dancing, going to the gym and going as a family on road trips around Oregon. 
Now I'm branching out into other areas of photography, most especially senior portraits, commercial photography and family portraits. Doing these things is great fun and lets me continue being creative in new ways.