I grew up in a land locked state who's motto was, 'Idaho, Famous Potatoes,' so naturally I left as soon as I could. I got my first camera from my mom on my twenty third birthday, it was one of those little Olympus point and shoot underwater cameras which was perfect because I was just leaving for Hawaii start my internship helping track and monitor the Hawksbill Sea Turtles for the summer.

I spent every day of that internship in the Hawai'ian waters with that little camera just snapping away at anything that swam by, filling my memory card with blurry, blue, backscattery images, it was incredible. It was in Hawaii though that I realized I wouldn't be doing anything with my university degree in Urban Planing and Sustainable Design and that I would HAVE to do something with the ocean, I was inspired.

The thought of being a photographer had never crossed my mind until I finished my Divemaster Course in Thailand when I was twenty five. I soon got a job as Videographer for a liveaboard with my little Canon G12 and when I wasn't chasing customers about I would play with the different settings on the camera just to figure out what did what. I had zero formal training in photography let along underwater photography but desperately wanted to be able to take the sort of pictures you see in magazines. I spent a lot of time on my own learning and experimenting with light and different compositions so that I would be able to someday take the sort of pictures I had admired, I'm still doing that now.

Since Thailand I've filmed and photographed in Malaysian Borneo, all over the mountains and oceans of Panama and now currently work on a liveaboard in Indonesia where I spend half the year in Komodo National park and the other half in Raja Ampat. I feel crazy lucky to be diving where I am now, I have some incredible opportunities with some amazing species and locations. I'm not one to waste an opportunity like this so I'm really pushing myself now and trying to developing my own unique set of images, which is a daunting task in this day of underwater photography.

I've upgraded to the Canon 7D with the Tokina 10-17 Fisheye, Canon 16-35, and the Canon 60mm with +5 Sub Sea Diopter. Nauticam Housing with two Inon Z-240 Strobes.