I’ve spent years chasing animals across continents, camera in hand, heart wide open—but I’ve never really stopped to write about why. Why I care so deeply. Why I do this work. Why I’ve devoted my life to telling stories of the wild.
So here it is. A little window into where it all began.
I was born in April 1971 and raised in San Juan, Texas—a small border town near the southern tip of the state. Back then, it was all dirt roads and open fields. We had two or three TV channels. There was no internet, and no cell phones.
That meant summer days were spent outside, in the Texas heat, under big skies, exploring my world.
I didn’t have neighbor kids to play with. My brother and I had different ideas of fun. So I was often alone… collecting lizards and bugs, watching animals, inventing games, playing in the dirt.
I had a freedom that’s hard to find now. No one worried about a kid roaming the outskirts of town alone back then.
And even at a young age, I was already showing signs of who I’d become. I had an addictive personality. A deep curiosity about animals. A fearlessness that sometimes made my mom nervous. She once told me she had to climb on top of the car to get me off the roof of our house. I was two years old.
From the beginning, animals were everything to me. I didn’t just like them—I needed them in my life.
I wanted to be a veterinarian, but not the kind who worked with dogs and cats. I wanted to work with lions. Elephants. Crocodiles. I wanted to be out in the wild, not in a clinic.
I read constantly. Poured over wildlife books. Studied animal behavior long before I had the language for what I was doing. And I always had pets—hamsters, chickens, cattle, horses, turtles, even show animals I raised through 4-H and FFA. Those programs taught me how to care for livestock, but they also taught me something else: I wasn’t built to raise animals for slaughter.
I’ve never liked killing. I’m not a hypocrite—I eat meat, and I understand the realities of life. But if there’s no need, I won’t do it. I’d rather just sit and watch animals.
As I got older, life pulled me in other directions. I worked construction, I fixed motor bikes, and I rode bulls.
I tried on the tougher life as a bull rider. It was a gritty, adrenaline-fueled world—raw and dangerous. Every ride was chaos. Eight seconds of violence and power. But even in those moments, surrounded by noise, dust, and cheering crowds, I wasn’t chasing trophies. Not really, I was chasing something else entirely.
For me, it was about learning to move with it— jump for jump. I wanted to dance with something wild and powerful. That feeling of riding an animal that couldn’t be tamed, and somehow matching its movements, was everything. I didn’t want to conquer it. I wanted to connect with it.
Eventually, I left that world behind, because I found something else that would change everything for me.
I encountered my first shark.
They weren’t what people said they were.
They were intelligent. Beautiful… and they had individual personalities.
I saw them clearly, and I wanted the world to see them that way too.
So I picked up a camera—not to collect images, but to tell stories. I wanted to speak up for the animals that had given me so much.
That camera became my compass.
In 2003, I launched Shark Diver Magazine, which opened doors I never expected. It connected me with people who felt the same way I did. And more importantly, it gave me a reason to chase these stories full-time.
Eventually, that mission evolved into SDM Adventures—a place where I could bring others along with me. Not just to show them wildlife, but to try and feel something as well. I wanted people to walk away changed.
That’s the heart of what I do now.
I take people into the wild not just to witness it, but to help them remember that they’re a part of it. I want them to feel what I felt when I first looked into the eye of a tiger shark. Or when I watched a mountain gorilla watching me. Or when a pilot whale hovered next to me like I belonged there.
As a kid, I was shaped by stories. Books and documentaries about people who lived with wildlife. People who gave their lives to understanding and protecting the natural world. Those stories didn't just entertain me. They gave me a map for living with purpose.
Now, I hope to do the same for others.
hanging out with a modern day dinosaur
Through photography. Through writing. Through expeditions. Through every conversation and every image shared, I’m hoping to spark something in someone else. A curiosity. A calling. A shift.
My life’s work is to document a world without fences. To capture what’s still wild and free—and to help people fall in love with it, just like I did.
Because when people fall in love with nature, they are more willing to protect it.
And that, in the end, is why I do what I do.
The wild called to me before I even had the words.
Now, I tell its story… and my hope is someone out there hears it too.
