Some people find their purpose in a boardroom. I found mine on a shoreline watching kids splashing in a sea of plastics they couldn't afford, and had never seen.

I spent years climbing the corporate ladder in Fortune 500 companies, which sounds impressive until you realize it's mostly airports, PowerPoints, and the slow erosion of your soul. I walked away from a big payday. My last boss asked me if I was an idiot for quitting the job, and not keeping my mouth shut about what was happening so I too could see the benefits. I walked out into everything else. No regrets.

My first real love affair with photography was on the streets of New York City, the chaos, the faces, the light bouncing off everything at once. Then travel took over, as it always does, and landscape photography pulled me deeper into understanding how to see. How to really look at something and find what makes it worth stopping for.

Then came the world trip. In Tonga, I came eye to eye with a humpback whale and her baby, how deep the water was, it was not a conference room, this was open ocean. In Fiji, I dropped into the blue alongside bull sharks and discovered that fear and awe occupy exactly the same space in your chest. It was like a train wreck, I couldn’t get away, but I was frozen to get closer. I joined a coral reef restoration project and put my hands in the ocean's wounds building a coral table from scratch with some of the best people on the planet. And then Manila, standing on a boardwalk watching waves of plastic roll in from the sea to the point I couldn’t tell where the ocean actually started. Somewhere between all of it, I was forever changed. Conservation stopped being a concept and became a calling.

I've been chasing that feeling ever since. I've stood on Clipperton Island, as part of an Explorer’s Club expedition, one of the most remote places on the planet, visited by only a handful of humans in all of recorded history. The sound was extraordinary: birds and waves in every direction, pure and overwhelming. And then you looked down. Plastic. Everywhere. Carried there by currents thrown by human hands thousands of miles away, tangled in the throats of creatures who had no part in putting it there. And you looked out from our “little” boat surrounded by commercial fishing ships waiting for the fish and sharks to swim out from the then 100-meter “marine protected area.”

If you ever join me in the field, you'll know exactly who I am within the first five minutes. I'll be the one lying face down on the edge of the boat, head and camera hanging over the side, trying to get that shot of the flying dolphins. Or plastered against a rock at a terrible angle because the sun is almost right, and the terns are friggin mean if they don’t know you. I spent three months with an osprey family in New Jersey during the height of Covid, sunrise to sundown, learning their feeding rhythms, watching the chicks grow and fledge one feather at a time. I am that person.

I travel by immersing myself completely in the culture, the food, the environment, the actual lives of wherever I am. I've slept in vans for reasons I'd rather not explain, stayed in shacks that weren’t exactly “accommodations”, and been on boats in the middle of nowhere, with storms picking up. I've had the time of my life every single time. There always was, and will be, coffee and chocolate in the field, and wine and a good scotch waiting back at base. That is a promise.

I live on Camano Island in Washington State now, surrounded by Pacific Northwest wilderness that keeps making the case for itself every single day. You're sure to find me with my camera on a boat, a wetland, or a mountain trail looking for connections to the ocean. If for some reason I can't be out there, I'll be at home tending my ocean-friendly garden, writing, or planning the next trip.

I also speak. At corporate events, schools, about the oceans, about what I've witnessed, about the connection between the decisions we make every day and the coral reef dying quietly on the other side of the world. I talk about the humpbacks in Tonga because nothing lands harder than that story. I talk about our power, not our guilt. There's a difference, and it matters.

My work has been featured in multiple publications, including Ocean Geographic, Backscatter, Seattle Times, and local media outlets. I’ve placed first, second, and third in photography competitions and featured at exhibits in NYC. Yet, my reward is always seeing the moment of connection in other people’s eyes. If my work or words inspire one person to realize our role in wildlife conservation and its importance, that beats the highest awards I could possibly win.

I write here and on Medium, following curiosity wherever it leads and finding stories that hopefully help people see their power to conserve nature and the health of future generations across multiple species.

I didn’t plan for this About Me page to shape like this, but I enjoyed writing it. I hope you enjoyed reading. It’s still a very short snippet, and obviously includes experiences that are most important to me.

My dream is simple and consistent: to connect people with the wild and their own power to conserve, from a stage, through a lens, on a boat, in a classroom, that saving the voiceless is how we save ourselves.

These days I take small groups of people to the places that changed me. Not tours. Experiences. A maximum of six people, a private boat, remote lodges, no crowds and no shortcuts. Just you, the wildlife, and a few days in a place that will rearrange something in you the same way it did me. I’ll provide guidance on using your camera, observing the natural awe inspiring behaviors, and recognizing how everything is connected.

Coffee, chocolate, and scotch or wine are always part of our trips, helping us reflect at the end of the day. All of our trips give back 10% to a non-profit actively working to keep our oceans healthy.

→ Join me on the next trip.

Come find me on Instagram — it's where I share what I'm seeing, what I'm thinking, and what's worth paying attention to out there.

→ @bnaturl

Want more of the Clipperton story? Link to my original Clipperton blog post