After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1972, I soon began making forays to the mountains. I experienced the Rockies and the Atlantic coast in 1973 and in 1974 saw my first three grizzly bears on my first of many backpacking trips. Encountering deep snow in Glacier Park my friend and I fashioned snow shoes out of spruce boughs and fishing line. My friend constantly complained but I thought it a great adventure. I soon returned west and did a series of solo backpacking trips. I soon expanded my exploration to the southwest. I took at least 30 backpacking trips, most solo, some epic (at least for me) before I bought my first camera at 29 years old.

Growing up in the country in rural Carroll County Illinois, I roamed the Mississippi Bluffs as a boy and in college I began to hatch a plan to emigrate west. I was drawn to mountains and rivers and I have been backpacking and running rivers now for a long time. I have traveled throughout North America from Alaska to Costa Rica and on five other continents. When my film camera broke during a two week river trip down the Green River in Utah in 2009, I finally switched to digital. I spent the winter of 2010-2011 scanning slides and prints from past decades. Everything you see on this site that was taken before 2010 was scanned, with limited sucess. The older kodachromes did not always scan well because of their sometimes thick emulsikon edges, which caused some chatter. After I switched mostly to Fujichrome with thinner emulsion edges the scanning got better.

Besides photos documenting my many travels and adventures, I have really taken to using my macro lens to photograph flowers, insects and spiders. Now you know spiders are not insects. Not all insects are bugs and flowers are all about sex!

A noted botonist friend will use many of my photos for her soon to be released book on pollinater plants of the Palouse, this rich agricultural landscape I have experienced for a half century now (2026).