In 2021, I set out on a 12,000-mile seat of your pants cross country road trip. After a decade of running my family’s rescue horse ranch and teaching photography at The Palm Beach Photographic Centre in Florida, I felt the pull west. I wanted to check in, go west, like my family did when I was a kid. I needed to see other landscapes, to feel the dry air of the Canyonlands or the smell of Douglas Fir in the North Cascades. Like all good adventures, the outcome was uncertain. In the end, I would come full circle back to the PNW, back to Seattle, and when the very place I called my wilderness home burned, the air thick with smoke under an ominous orange sky from the Bolt Creek Fire, I knew I had to capture stories that underscored the necessity of preservation. With that moment vividly etched in my mind, I signed with Zuma Press and went back to Conservation Photojournalism—my starting point when I first moved to Seattle after college. Back then, conservation groups needed photographs for their newsletters, and I discovered the state mainly by documenting the health of its rivers.
He gives talks for Nikon on the Road Trip and has a workshop at Maine Media Workshops, helping photographers prepare for their own photography adventures.