My story

After graduating from Liberty High School in 1989 I studied to become graphic designer at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, Calif. While there one of my teachers was the photo editor of a local newspaper called the Ledger Dispatch and asked if I was interested in working part time as a photo tech. The job was challenging and involved working with tight deadlines and late hours. After three years of watching the staff of photographers running in and out of the photo department, I was invited to tag along on a breaking news assignment. A driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and drove their vehicle into a flooded river. From that moment on I was hooked and it sparked my photojournalism career.

I spent the next couple of years working very hard to learn everything I could until I was hired as a part time photographer at the LaMorinda Sun in Lafayette, Calif., where I worked covering news and community sports assignments. In 1997, I applied and was hired as a full-time photographer back at the Ledger Dispatch where it all began. Fast forward to 1999 where the photo editors at the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek began paying attention to my work. I made the transition to working at the “Big House” (as we called it) where I began traveling to cover major news assignments and our local professional sports teams. I did so well my first year at the Contra Costa Times the Society of Professional Journalists Northern California chapter awarded me the Outstanding Young Journalist award in 1999 for my work in Mexico, El Salvador and California. Later that year I was accepted as a young photojournalist to the highly coveted Eddie Adams workshop in New York. Our newspaper would later be sold and purchased by Digital First Media and renamed the East Bay Times. In 2017, I was part of the East Bay Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. Reporters, photojournalists, graphic designers and page designers were honored for their coverage of the 2016 tragedy that killed 36 people. During the tail end of the Covid pandemic I was asked to be a photography judge for the 2021 POYi photography competition. I loved and learned so much from being a judge but I wished I could have traveled to Missouri instead of judging from my home office.

I’ve won lots of awards and been lucky to be invited to speak at many photography workshops. But when I was asked by my dear friend Bert Hanashiro to become a guest instructor at his photography workshop “SportsShooter” in Southern California I began to fall in love with teaching. This lead me to become an adjunct professor teaching photography at Las Positas College in Livermore, Calif., where I teach general photography and photojournalism since 2023. My goal now is to pay it forward and to teach so students can become the best photographers than can be. I teach students to make images that tell a story, use color and balance to please the eye. To wait for the decisive moment and more importantly when not to push the shutter button. And in that process I hope they make mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Because making mistakes is the only way you’ll learn and get better. I also urge those who want to pursue a career in this field to find a mentor whose work you admire and can learn from them. As I’ve gotten older my priorities have changed drastically. My main goal now is to continue having fun making photos while teaching young photojournalist so they can use their photography skills to change the world.