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I was Born and raised in Northern California and studied Accounting/Finance at thee University of Chico State. I decided to not pursue Accounting and worked as a Loan Officer for a large bank. I enjoyed my career as a LO, especially helping customers purchase their first home, but things changed in 2024.

I started photography a little over 5 years ago as an activity to get out of the house during the Covid pandemic. I learned the basics with astro and long exposure photography. I transitioned to landscape photography and continued to make incremental improvements each year.

In the Spring of 2024, I lost my job as a Mortgage Consultant due to a collapse in the mortgage market. This was the result of high interest rates coupled with historically high home prices. I decided to spend the remainder of the year to focus on Photography.

The following June with a new camera in hand, I got on that big jet airliner, and went to Colombia for six weeks. I had been to Colombia before for vacation, but my goal for this trip was to improve my bird photography. Initially, I found it difficult schedule shoots at bird venues as every place does things a little differently. I eventually figured things out and spent a few weeks shooting a various locations. My bird photography skills increased due to shooting for a week or two at a time. It was a truly exciting time because not only was I seeing dramatic improvement, the subjects I was photographing were so beautiful.

The trip to Colombia gave me the confidence and the positive momentum I needed to move forward with my life. I continued to shoot nearly every day when I got back to California. When I had time to reflect on the past year, I decided that I wanted to share in the success I had in Colombia with others by providing bird photography tours.