My photographic journey began in 1984, at the age of fifteen, when I bought my first camera (my first major purchase of anything, for that matter).  It was a Nikon FG 35 mm.  The following year, I was a photographer for my high school yearbook, mainly because I was one of the only kids on the yearbook staff who owned a decent camera.

 

I spent the first 22 years of my life in Ohio.  Upon reflection, Ohio is a great place for a budding photographer.  I say this because (and here I am at risk of offending some Ohioans) the somewhat lackluster nature of the place required me to look hard for good subject matter, and thus trained well my photographic eye.  I think that growing up in a naturally photogenic place like San Francisco or Colorado would have made it too easy.  I was raised in Toledo, and attended Miami University in Oxford, in southwest Ohio.  That's me to the right, in front of the Toledo Skyline, circa 1988. 

 

After graduating from college, I moved out to California, and have spent most of the years since in various parts of the San Francisco Bay Area.  In the mid-1990s, I lived in Los Angeles for two years, where I pursued a graduate degree in Geography at UCLA.

 

Over the course of my adult life, I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to do quite a bit of international travel, which many of these photographs document.  One of these trips was to Ladakh, a Tibetan Buddhist region in northern India.  This is where I had my first glimpse of Buddhism as a living religion, embedded in the fabric of a beautiful and fascinating culture.  It was that experience, more than any other, that led me to Buddhist practice.  Later, I returned to India on Buddhist pilgrimage, in 2003 and 2011. 

 

From 2001 to 2013, I lived at San Francisco Zen Center, spending time at all three of its practice centers -- Green Gulch Farm in Marin County (north of S.F.), Tassajara Hot Springs in Monterey County (south of S.F.), and City Center (in Hayes Valley, close to the geographical heart of San Francisco).  In October, 2002, I received the precepts and was given the dharma name Korin Yushin, which can be translated as "Authentic Forest, Heart Set Free."  My time at Zen Center, especially at the organization's monastery at Tassajara, was life-transforming, and has greatly influenced my work.

 

Since leaving Zen Center in June 2013, my partner, Aileen Rodriguez, and I have made our home in Sonoma County, in the heart of California wine country.  The picturesque landscape in which we live has proved to be fertile ground, not only for grape vines and oak trees, but also for a multitude of photographic opportunities.