Duration: Five years.

Staff: Myself and occasional assistants.

Education: BFA, Photography, University of Colorado; MA, Art History, University of Arizona.

Cultural Influences: I love the stories behind great photographs. I love that Dorothea Lange made a u-turn twenty miles after a sign to a pea-pickers’ camp. The frames before the Migrant Mother image show her following her intuition like a bread-crumb trail to that canvas tent. I love that Edward Weston struggled all day to capture the beauty of that bell pepper. Then he noticed an aluminum funnel, popped the pepper in, and the rest is history. I love that Yousuf Karsh snagged Winston Churchill’s cigar. These stories are talismans, reminders that the ultimate images are in the unexpected.

Environment: Before bridges linked the Bay Area together, boats transported people and goods to San Francisco. I’m lucky to live that way now: I catch the breeze from the top deck of the Oakland-San Francisco ferry, and watch what the bay offers—a sunset, a sea lion, a tanker, a trawler. My studio is on the water’s edge, in the former ferry station post office, where boats once docked to transport the mail into and out of the city. I am blessed to have this studio but I do most of my work outdoors, within a mile’s radius of it. The commercial waterfront of San Francisco, the Embarcadero, is a magical place.

Philosophy: Frame it in the positive, even when it hurts.