about..."I fell in love with rock climbing about as soon as I could drive to the rocks!"
Thus initially explaining my life’s mantra to; ‘always seek adventure’.
Growing up in San Rafael, just north of San Francisco, California, I was lucky to have some of the greatest rock walls in the world only about a 4 hour drive away in Yosemite National Park! My life long passion for adventures started with climbing and lead to traveling the world. I was fascinated in school and beyond with geography, cultures, peoples and places, I wanted to experience some of these exotics for myself, first hand!
I left college at 21, having studied architecture for several years and joined the carpenter’s union, got married and had one son, Jeremy. By 25 I was divorced but kept custody of my son, we lived together until he moved out at age 23 to pursue a career in aviation. I had my private pilots license for several years while he was growing up. He’s currently a commercial pilot for Northwest Airlines.
In the meantime, I tried to go exploring to all sorts of places and about 1990 I decide to try to shoot professionally, editorial style for magazines. I was always drawn to that style of images, showing an exotic place as in my favorite magazine; National Geographic. One of my first assignments was to document a traditional Saami or Lappland wedding in the far northern reaches of Norway for the New York Times. Soon after I picked up another assignment, this one for Outside Magazine to travel to South America to Venezuela to shoot a bunch of guys that were going to rappel, slide down a single rope, off of the world’s highest waterfall at 3,200 feet; Angel Falls. The next year I was back at the falls, this time working for a TV show called “The World’s Greatest Stunts” where a guy was to ride a mountain bike off of Angel Falls. He and his bike had parachutes and safely landed in the jungle. I also sold these stills to the National Enquirer, where they ran a double page spread.
Finally I received an assignment from my mentor magazine and images from a rock climbing trip appeared in National Geographic World! My images have also appeared in Climbing Magazine, Audubon, Nature Conservancy, Men’s Health and numerous other magazines and brochures.
I self-published my first hard-cover book in Sept. 2006, on all “The Islands of San Francisco Bay”. I shot over 600 rolls of film for the book and hired 8 writers to tell the history and ecology of these unique landforms. I wrote 2 chapters and parts of others as well. Please take a look at: www.islandsofSFbay.com.
My travels have always been about “collecting experiences” but sharing those visions through still images has been my challenge and certainly my passion. Without great passion the energy to capture the moment would be lost!
I hope you enjoy these glimpses of destinations that I’ve tried to capture in time, with the brief descriptions that only begin to describe the experience and thanks for visiting my world!
James
