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Newspaper reporter and videographer
After graduating from Stanford, I worked for several years as a reporter for community newspapers in Baltimore, Maryland. A lecture on information theory turned me toward video just as the first portable cameras hit the consumer market. I then 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 TV 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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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. I also wrote several articles for Audubon magazine and Alaska magazine.
(LEFT) I met this winsome family in the mountains of Veracruz while researching an article for Defenders of Wildlife. 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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Book author
Working on the crew for a "World of Survival" (UK) 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 sold more than 5,000 copies. Learn more about it at Amazon.com.
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Photographer
I've been an avid photographer for years, occasionally selling photos with my magazine articles--and for "Bear Man of Admiralty Island" (see above). In Alaska I got hung up for a while on photographing dogs in pick-up trucks. I used infrared film, because I loved how its revelation of otherwise invisible radiation kept reminding me that the world is always and everywhere much stranger than it seems--many surreal images emerged from southeastern Alaska's silvery light.
(LEFT) My "Wet Fur and Chrome" photos of dogs in pick-up trucks 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 gathering of Native Alaskan elders.
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Grassroots environmental organizer
Soon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill a Canadian company announced plans to bury a wild valley in Juneau, Alaska three-hundred feet deep in toxic mine tailings. With several neighbors I co-founded a grassroots non-profit that grew to more than 500 members (in a small town of 30,000 folks). It 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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© 2011 Clearwater Communications
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