I have a confession: I'm a failed athlete.
Perhaps that's not a surprise, especially after seeing this mug photo, circa 1986.
The highlight of my basketball playing career was at Poynter Jr. High, when the entire student body was cheering my name. Yep, it was during a blowout victory and I was sent in to mop up.
Win big or lose big, that was my time to shine.
I always LOVED sports, even though sports didn't always love me.
So when I discovered my second love - photography - shooting sports seemed like my destiny.
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I'm also an addict.
No matter how hard I try, I can't quit traveling.
Adventures include: falling in love with Sarajevo, freezing in Poland, sweating in India, studying in Lyon, photographing Olympians in Beijing and gambling along the Trans Siberian Railway.
It's also great to return from a long trip to my home in Portland, my favorite destination of all.
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For work, I spent from 1997-2007 as a newspaper photojournalist. The final 7 years were spent documenting my home state as a staffer for The (Portland) Oregonian. Yep, an Oregonian at The Oregonian.
Some of my sports photography received industry street cred by placing in Pictures of the Year International (POYi) for Best Sports Portfolio and Best Action.
Of course my mom is most proud of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting, which I won with a team of staffers from The Oregonian for coverage of a missing family in southern Oregon.
My work has appeared in National Geographic, Penthouse, ESPN the Magazine, Stern, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Wired, People, Newsweek, TIME and The New York Times among others.
Commercial clients include Nike, Umpqua Bank, eBay and ACE Hardware (The Helpful Place!).
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A few years ago, I was talking with someone in the biz about my career and life path. She asked the simplest question, one I naturally hadn't thought of:
"What do you love doing?"
Answer: Travel, Sports, Photography and Weird Shit.
So with that in mind, I left the newspaper world the summer of 2007 to work on a book project of weird sports around the globe. That book, Weird Sports, was published by Kehrer Verlag in the summer of 2011.
For this failed athlete and addicted traveler, life has never been better.