About me
For most of my career, I was a magazine publisher who oversaw teams of creative talent. They included art directors, designers, editors, writers, production, advertising sales, and circulations staff. I admired and appreciated the unique gifts they brought to the teams, and they won many awards and were recognized nationally and internationally. In this role, I was passionate about what they could produce, generating millions of dollars for the parent companies and helping customers lead healthier and more meaningful lives.
Since 2000, I have been a PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) Dive Master taking groups of scuba divers around the world for their underwater adventures. I took photos during that time, but only made albums and DVDs for these divers. In 2019, I learned to freedive and that made a big difference being with the ocean creatures up close and to interact with them. I had my first photographic exhibit in North Kohala in November, 2020.
I am also a writer whose stories and photos have appeared in Kohala Mountain News and Ke Ola Magazine about my encounters with the green turtles, spinner dolphins, and sharks. I try to show the marine life personalities, behaviors, and essence. We have no idea how important they are to the planet and our lives. I’d like to share what I see in them to as many as I can. For it is only us who can protect and save them.
When I lived in Hong Kong, I wrote about the places I visited, the festivals, the food, and getting around. The stories were seen in a WordPress blog that I had years ago.
In Seattle, I volunteered as a beach naturalist for the Seattle Aquarium, and I would take groups of people on tours of the beaches during the low tides of summer. The low tides of winter were done at night, and may have been more interesting than the daytime tours. I wrote about the things I saw and took photos. I was a seal sitter in my neighborhood where the baby harbor seals would be left on the beach while their moms hunted food. These seal pups would be subjected to dogs, hoards of people, and boaters who could come close to the beach to look. The seal sitters would keep these encounters to a minimum.
Moving to Hawaii and swimming in the ocean became a natural place to observe and learn about fish behaviors. I had been spoiled by scuba diving, so the reef fish weren’t of much interest to me, but after a time, I couldn’t help but notice unusual things taking place. In 2018 I went to Thailand for a week of scuba diving on a liveaboard. I decided to buy an underwater camera and that got me started shooting photos on my daily swims back home.
