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Community newspaper reporter and video artist
After graduating from college, I worked for several years as a reporter for community newspapers in Baltimore. A lecture on information theory turned me toward video just as the first portable cameras hit the consumer market. I worked for several years as a videographer, funded by state arts council grants, teaching video workshops and producing closed-circuit shows in the Baltimore City prison and in schools and senior citizen centers.
(LEFT) One of my documentaries focused on water conservation issues in the Patapsco River watershed.
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Public television news reporter and cameraman
In 1979, lured by the call of the wild, I took a job as a news cameraman at PBS station KTOO-TV in Juneau, Alaska. Besides daily shooting and editing work for a nightly news program, I reported and produced news segments on environmental issues. I did one in-depth series on the impacts of logging on wildlife populations and another on marine mammals. I later did TV field production and news reporting for “Capital ‘86,” the statewide program of the Alaska State Legislature, at one point writing and producing a series on Native Alaskan subsistence rights. |
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Graduate student and freelance journalist
I left Alaska several times to study sociobiology and communication at San Francisco State University. My M.A. thesis focused on the impact of deforestation on neotropical migratory songbirds. I spent much of my time researching a World Wildlife Fund project helping rural communities in southern Mexico develop sustainable forestry practices. My articles about it were published in Defenders of Wildlife magazine and Margin, a British journal.
(LEFT) I met this winsome family in the mountains of Veracruz. When I asked if I could take their picture, they posed stiffly until I made a funny face and they lit up with smiles.
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Nature writer
Studying animal communication at San Francisco State, I read The Question of Animal Awareness, by Donald Griffin. That inspired me to write an article for Audubon magazine about northern elephant seals on the Farallon Islands, off San Francisco. My article focused on a young bull's daring decision to fight an older, dominant bull.
(LEFT) That's my photo of the overweening dude himself cozying up to a cow, just before the big battle.
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Book author
Working on the crew for a film about Alaska coastal brown bears, I got interested in a famous Alaska pioneer and bear expert named Allen Hasselborg. I spent two years researching a biography of him on several grants, traveling to museums and libraries and interviewing sources in 12 states. While hawking the manuscript I read it in six installments over Alaska Public Radio.
(LEFT) "Bear Man of Admiralty Island" was published in 1996 by the University of Alaska Press and has since sold more than 4,000 copies. Learn more about it at Amazon.com.
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Artsy photographer
Living in Juneau, Alaska I got hung up for a while on photographing dogs in pick-up trucks. I wanted to focus on a narrow subject to learn to see better. I used infrared film because I loved how its revelation of invisible radiation kept reminding me that the world is always infinitely stranger than it seems. Many surreal images emerged from Juneau's silvery Pacific Northwest light.
(LEFT) My "Wet Fur and Chrome" photos were published by Urban Desires, a New York web 'zine.
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Media literacy teacher
As a videographer in the state of Alaska's "Artists in Schools" program, I taught television production and critical viewing to high school students in remote rural villages statewide. I spent most of my time explaining the difference between commercials and programming and putting cameras in the hands of kids so they could make their own TV.
(LEFT) Two of my students editing footage they've just shot at a meeting of Native Alaskan elders.
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Co-founder, director of grassroots environmental organization
Soon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill a Canadian company announced plans to bury a valley near my cabin three-hundred feet deep in mine tailings. With several neighbors I founded a grassroots non-profit that was instrumental in stopping the mine. As executive director, I wrote and produced a newsletter, wrote grant applications, led fundraising campaigns, represented the organization to local media, testified at hearings, organized events, and managed our office and budget.
(LEFT) To raise money and publicize our cause on local radio, I recorded and produced an audio cassette of migratory birds singing in the endangered valley.
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© 2004 Clearwater Communications
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