Sometime before the age of 10, I took my first pictures with a Kodak Starlite Brownie. Living in Carmel at the time, I saw the work of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and many others from an early age, and quickly decided that I really wanted to take pictures just like theirs. Several years later I attended workshops in Carmel with the Friends of Photography -- a wonderful and very influential experience. I've been hooked on photography ever since, but pursued botany in college and environmental consulting as a career. In the mid-'90s I made a career change into graphic design, specializing in information graphics, cartography, and visual simulations -- still in the environmental consulting field. I gave up that Brownie a long time ago, and I'm currently enjoying a Nikon D700.