Storm At Monument Valley

Although I consider myself lucky to have spent a year in high school in one of those antiquated relics of the past called a darkroom, I put the camera down after class ended and unexpectedly resumed my photographic journey only two years ago, while tripping on homegrown psychedelic mushrooms on Navajo land, in Monument Valley, Arizona.

Some place between liftoff and arriving in the gentle embrace of the void, a storm passed through the campsite overlooking the famous 160 million-year-old sandstone mittens. Out came the little point-and-shoot digital camera I had decided to tote along – SNAP – and now I'm on a trip that's lasted a lot longer than I could have anticipated. Getting home from Monument Valley, I spent the next three weeks immersed in the world of Photoshop for the first time, pushing sliders and wondering about the possibilities of the modern digital darkroom.

My first love was landscape photography, which quickly transformed into a love of documenting peoples and their culture after moving to a small village on the north shore of Lake Chapala, Mexico.