“Like many photographers I developed an enthusiastic interest in photography and creating images at an early age. I usually appear in family photos with a camera around my neck. My father was a keen amateur photographer, and was always coming home with some new sort of camera, which he generously let me use. One of my favorites was the Corfield Periflex, an innovative 1950s British camera that had a focal plane shutter, interchangeable lenses using a Leica screw mount, and through the lens focusing via a minature periscope. It was my father who taught me the importance of actively thinking about composition, looking through the viewinder with careful purpose rather than simply aiming the camera.”

“A life-long love of all animals led me, like many high-schoolers, to aspire to be a veterinarian, but as veterinary school is harder to get into than medical school I ended up going in other directions. I worked in science for many years, including photographing exotic aquatic organisms, and a lot of petri dishes and bacterial colonies. It is a pleasure to now be able to combine my loves of photography and larger, furrier, animals.”