P R I V A T E I N V E S T I G A T O R - P H O T O G R A P H E R - W R I T E R - A R T I S T - N A T U R A L I S T
My beloved dog, Cooper, who died July 2022
For the past 17 years, I’ve made my living as a private investigator working on criminal and civil cases. I received a BA in Business/Communications from Western State College (now Western Colorado University) and completed a year of graduate courses in Criminal Justice at WSU in Spokane, WA. I worked a year as a Court Appointed Special Advocate in Washington State representing abused children in court. Prior to that, I co-owned and operated snowboard and consignment businesses.
Woven throughout my life has been a love of nature, animals and photography. I was born in Colorado where I spent summers nestled high in the Rocky Mountains. For half of each year, when I was very young, I lived in a two room cabin, miles from any neighbors. My mother cooked and heated on a wood stove and home schooled my older brothers. There was no indoor bathroom and we didn’t have electricity or a telephone. The roads were dirt and grocery shopping was 40 miles away.
September 2023
When I was nine years old, my dad gave me an Argus 35mm camera. I used to help him in our dark room – a place of pure magic to me -- that was set up in our basement. I fell in love with photography. I think what makes photography extraordinary, is not capturing just what something looks like, but rather what it feels like. The best in photography is also about telling a story, even if that story is a nano second long. And sharing that story is part of what connects us as humans.
I’m an author of several wildlife and nature photography books. Summers and fall are spent in an off-grid in cabin in the mountains. I've lived in Asia and all around the United States, and most recently, British Columbia in Canada. I’m an abstract artist and over the years have combined welding with painting. Spare time, when I'm not out following ants or bees or dragonflies, or other tiny life, or out exploring on my mountain e-bike, is spent reading, researching, writing, and finding creative outlets. I'm passionate about human and animal rights.
