My interest in photography started when I picked up my first issues of skateboarding magazines. I immediately identified with not only the action in the photos, but with the image itself. The photographs struck a chord with me and in a subconscious way got me thinking about composing still life images of my friends as we skateboarded all over the Southwest United States.
It wasn’t until some years later while living in Vail, Colorado that I actually picked up a camera and started taking pictures. My buddies and I owned a small snowboarding company which didn’t have the budget to pay for ad photos, so we learned to photograph, design catalogs and create a website ourselves. It was a learn-out-of-necessity scenario, and although we made plenty of mistakes, we were learning with everything we tried.
Eventually I moved out to Burlington, Vermont in 1999 to work for Burton Snowboards as a Team Manager. This led to the job of Principal Photographer in 2003, which I still have to this day, documenting the Burton Team as they make their way around the world for contest, photo shoots and film trips.