I’m a biologist and biology professor during the work week, but I spend most of my free time out photographing, and there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. Largely influenced by my grandfather, I’ve been fascinated with wild places for as long as I can remember. And while I enjoy a pretty mountain scene as much as anyone, to say that a place is truly wild is less about the scenery and more about the animals that call it home. The landscape is just the backdrop; the wildlife is the soul of a place.
Based in the some of the wildest country left in the contiguous United States, my photography focuses on the northern Rocky Mountains of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. I spend as much time as I can out photographing, so much so that in some cases I’ve come to know the habits and even the personalities of individual animals. Still, no matter how well I know an animal or plan out my trips, it is always the animals that set the pace, make the rules, and determine the outcomes. This is another thing I love about wildlife photography: it gives me experiences that are truly unpredictable, which are a refreshing escape from our overly tame and pre-planned day-to-day lives. Every so often those moments are once-a-lifetime events, things that I know I will never see again and am immensely privileged to have seen even once. Those are the moments I live for, and photography is just the means by which I share those moments with others.
