I am a photographer and an aviator. So I take photographs both from very far away and up close. 

From the air, you can reveal things about the land you can’t know from the ground. 

When I’m on the ground, I shoot location portraits that aim to reveal something not readily known about the subject. 

The two are not mutually exclusive. On an aerial shoot to the hottest spot in the world, I took a day away from the helicopter and hiked-climbed 1000 meters above the surrounding Ethiopian valley to visit two monks living in caves. It was worth it. You can see results of both here.

I live in Northern Virginia, but have shot all over the world for clients including Vanity Fair, American Express Departures, National Geographic, Audubon and Smithsonian magazine. My work has been commissioned for advertising campaigns, annual reports and editorial features.

Sometimes I’m my own client—I’ve been documenting the good work of the Community Coalition for Haiti for 13 years. And I took 20 years to document the Chesapeake Bay Watershed from the air in a book called simply CHESAPEAKE. It’s one of six books of my collected work. Maybe my great-grandfather being Chief of the Bureau of Mines in West Virginia had something to do with my documenting how we treat the land. And maybe the fact that my mom, in 1962, was the first female helicopter traffic reporter at WWDC had something to do with my showing it from the air.

But what I know for sure is that I love to shoot. I have to shoot. It’s been that way since I found a camera in the back of a closet at the age of fourteen.â�¨