In 1986, I went to Hawaii to shoot the Ironman triathlon for a small sports stock agency with nothing but my camera gear and my airplane ticket. I slept on someone's floor the first night after hitchhiking into town. By the end of the weekend Sports Illustrated had "hired" me to shoot for them. The perks of being the SI shooter? A seat in a chopper for the start of the race and a jeep with a driver for the rest of the competition. The result of being prepared when thrown into the fire was a double-spread, table-of-contents picture, which eventually became one of LIFE magazine's Pictures of the Decade. Two decades later, I am still shooting sports, now as a staffer for Sports Illustrated.

It sure didn't start out that way. I went to school and popped out of UC Irvine with a BA in history and a teaching credential. I taught for seven years, mostly in Los Angeles. During that time I started to dabble in surfing photography. I eventually worked my way into a senior staff position with Surfer Magazine and based myself and my family in Carlsbad, California. I worked at Surfer for a few years traveling the world shooting beautiful waves and the best surfers.

That well was running dry when I found Focus West, a small sports stock agency. They provided me with credentials to college and pro sports, and I went to work at the stadiums across America. Focus West was gobbled up by another stock house and I jumped from that ship into the growing sports-card market on the back of Upper Deck. This whole time I would freelance for Sports Illustrated once in a while. By the end of the Atlanta Summer Olympics, I had become a contract photographer with the magazine. Around '98 I became a staffer, and these days I pride myself on having a diverse, if small, number of covers for Sports Illustrated.

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