How I Got into Photography

I was born into a life of adventure and photography.

My dad was a pioneer in the scuba diving industry, so I grew up around boats, dive gear, cameras, and stories from places most people only dream about. In the 70s, I would go on dives with him, and we would take two Nikonos camera bodies with us so we could come back with 48 pictures.

That was it. Forty-eight chances.

No digital screen. No checking the back of the camera. No firing off thousands of images and hoping one worked. You had to pay attention. You had to think. You had to understand light, distance, timing, and patience before you ever pressed the shutter.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand how much that shaped me. It was just part of my childhood. But looking back now, I realize those early dives taught me something that still matters in my work today.

You don’t always get unlimited chances at a moment. You have to be ready when it happens.

I knew early on that I didn’t want a normal life. I didn’t want to spend my days working in an office, staring at the same walls, living the same week over and over. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, but I knew it wasn’t that.

At one point, I thought maybe I would be a musician. The problem was, I had no talent.

I moved to Hollywood and gave acting a real shot. And I’m glad I did. I worked with people like Kevin Costner, Angelina Jolie, and many others. I got to be on sets, see how films were made, and learn how light shapes a scene. It was fun. It was exciting. It gave me stories. It gave me perspective.

But it still wasn’t the thing. It wasn’t the end all.

It wasn’t until I rediscovered photography that something finally clicked. It felt like I had found the thing I had been circling my whole life.

When I first started taking photography seriously, I wanted to do a little bit of everything. I met a photographer who told me I needed to focus on one thing. I didn’t listen.

I wanted to shoot everything — fashion, portraits, music, wildlife, adventure, whatever caught my attention. There was a local boutique in town that had some cool clothes, so I offered the owner a trade. I would shoot photos for her if she would let me use some of the clothes for a fashion shoot.

That one little trade changed more than I realized at the time.

That was how I met Marrika Nakk, and Marrika eventually led me to Cowboys & Indians magazine. That opened another door, and before long I was photographing musicians, actors, artists, and people with stories. That path led me to people like Ryan Bingham, Jimmie Vaughan, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and a whole world I probably never would have found if I had listened to that advice and stayed in one lane.

Around that same time, I was also photographing musician friends. I had moved back home just outside of Austin, where music was everywhere, and one of my neighbors was Larry Chaney, Edwin McCain’s guitarist. One day Larry called and said Edwin needed photographs of his guitars for the album cover of Scream & Whisper.

I went over to Larry’s house, photographed the guitars, and about a month later I had my first album cover.

I remember thinking, “Well, that was easy. I can do this.”

Of course, nothing about photography is actually easy. But that moment gave me just enough confidence to keep going.

Music photography opened a lot of doors. It put me around artists, stage lights, backstage moments, and people who had built their lives around chasing something most people are too afraid to chase. Over the years, I photographed people like Willie Nelson, Billy F Gibbons, Jimmie Vaughan, Lyle Lovett, Paul Simon, Edie Brickell, Donavon Frankenreiter, and others.

But the wild kept calling me back.

The ocean had been there from the beginning. The camera eventually gave me a way to return to it with purpose. I started chasing the animals and places that had always pulled at me — great white sharks, tiger sharks, hammerhead sharks, humpback whales, orcas, penguins, leopard seals, mountain gorillas, lions, rhinos, and wild horses running through the surf.

Photography took me to all seven continents, above and below the water, somewhere in all of that, I started to understand something else.

I’m not immortal.

Maybe that sounds obvious, but it took me a while to really feel it. When you’re young, you think there will always be more time. More trips. More chances. More years to figure it out. Then one day you realize the clock has been running the whole time.

That realization changes things.

I don’t really care about leaving a legacy in the traditional sense. People talk a lot about legacy, but the truth is, most of us will be forgotten faster than we want to admit. Some of the most famous people who ever lived are already unknown to younger generations. That is just how time works.

So I’m not doing this because I think people are going to remember my name forever.

I’m doing it because I’m here now, these animals and wild places are here now. I can’t understand why more people don’t care.

I have been face to face with animals that can change the way you see the world. I have looked into the eye of a whale, swum with great white, tiger, and hammerhead sharks, floated in the middle of a raft of penguins in the waters of Antarctica, and stood with the last two northern white rhinos on the planet. I have been charged by a silverback gorilla and bull elephants in full musth, and I have had my camera in the wide-open mouth of a saltwater crocodile. I have stood in wild places so beautiful they remind you how much is still worth protecting.

People sometimes think I’m an adrenaline junkie...I’m really not, quite the opposite. I’m not chasing danger. I just like being around wildlife. I’m not afraid of animals, and I think they can sense that. Fear changes the energy of an encounter. So does respect. I try to come into those moments calm, aware, and without pretending I’m in control of anything.

That doesn’t mean these animals are safe.They are wild, and that is the whole point.

I just want to be close enough to watch how they move, how they think, how they react, and how they live when the human world gets quiet for a minute. The danger is not the point. The connection is. Those moments stay with you, change you. Every time I come home, I wonder the same thing. How can anyone see this and not want to protect it?

That question has become a big part of my work. I believe we protect what we love. But before people can love something, they have to feel connected to it. That is what I’m trying to do with my photography.

The photographs are not just about beauty anymore. They are not just proof that I was there. They are a way to bring people closer to something they may never experience in person. A way to make them feel something. A way to make them care, even if only for a moment.

That is what eventually led me toward conservation and that is what led me toward Everwild.

What started with my dad, dive boats, and underwater cameras became a life built around art, music, storytelling, and protecting the wild places that shaped me. I may have been a late bloomer, but maybe that is part of the story too. Sometimes it takes a while to become who you were supposed to be.

I didn’t want a normal life. Turns out, I was never meant for one.