I got a C-minus in high school geography and was terrible with maps.

My dad gave me a Nikon FM10 when I was sixteen or seventeen, but I did not really learn to use it until college, smoking cigarettes and rolling film with my best friend, H-Man. I studied geography, GIS, and meteorology—though “studied” may be generous. I drank, smoked, and earned a second degree in social life.

In Grad School, I got more serious. I restarted the geography honors society at school and began chasing internships. One took me to Yosemite, where I spent summers tracking bears, giving ranger talks in the valley. Another took me to Washington, D.C., as a geography intern at National Geographic. I slung boxes for the brown trucks on the side to make ends meet.

In DC- I lived in a roach-infested house and scrounged film from the basement return stock—expired or X-rayed rolls photographers had brought back from assignments. I made bad photographs then. I still do.

These days, I have a day job in disaster response—which pretty much sums up my life.

I carry a camera as a personal diary. I am less interested in whether every photograph is “good” than in whether it helps me remember where I was, what I saw, and what life felt like. Someday, I want my children to be able to look through the pictures and understand something about what their dad did with his time.

I am a family guy first. I try to be a solid father and to show up for my wife and kids. Not much else matters. I drive an old Land Cruiser and take it camping as much as possible with my family.

Have fun. Laugh. Be a good human. Raise good humans. Carry a camera. Challenge yourself to see —and, for the people who care enough to stop and look, show them something about the world that makes them think, act, and participate in life.

I take pictures of people and places.

“F/8 and be there.”
—Arthur Fellig