I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, a corner of the United States that sometime gets a bad name for too much rain. When I was growing up, family vacations and road trips were always to one of the great Northwest national parks, the Oregon coast or camping at a high mountain lake in the lush green Cascades. My dad was at the wheel of the station wagon, mom riding shotgun smoking a Camel, and me and my six brothers in the back seats. Everywhere we went was a magical adventure as we spent our days excitedly exploring and discovering the wonders of nature.

My youthful excitement for exploring nature was nurtured and kept alive throughout my teens and into my adult life by returning to favorite places on hiking and backpacking trips and vacations with my wife and children.

A camera became as standard a piece of equipment as the tent or sleeping bag. As my interest and skills in photography grew, I discovered that the process of making an image took me to another level of exploration and appreciation of nature's stunning and sometimes fleeting beauty.

It's often very difficult for me to describe the experience or convey the feeling of what it's like to be standing in an alpine wildflower meadow watching it explode with light and color as the sun comes up. It's a symphony of light, sounds, feelings and smells. The awakening birds, a gentle breeze, the smells of the clean air and the glorious multi-colored landscape all contribute to the performance.

With the camera, I try to capture a small portion of nature's performance, the visual portion, the symphony of light.