My Life As an Adventure Filmmaker and Photographer (Part 1) | Nat Geo Live

I was just down in Antarctica on a really incredible expedition. We're doing a climate change story on the wildlife and the conditions, and, uh, a fishing story as well on what's happening down in Antarctica.

The last 5 days of the journey, we crossed the Drake Passage on a boat. This is our little boat here. The Drake Passage is like notoriously bad, right? I had no idea what I was getting into. I feel like I've traveled a lot in my life, but I've never commuted like this before, right? The entire team didn't even know what they were getting into. You could see the boat pitch and roll, and just navigating around the boat was a nightmare. Eating and using the bathroom was just not even worth getting into; it was crazy.

By the end of the journey, you know, you're so spun that when we finally... Oh, and by the way, this is when it was calm enough where we could actually roll cameras, right? So, the waves got as high as 30 feet, the winds were as high as 60 knots. The best thing you could do is just lay in your bed and just take it; there’s no way out of it. It's like a mobile prison. But, um, it's an experience I'm glad that I did because I've read all about Shackleton and the original Antarctica explorers and everything else, and it was great to actually go down and have that experience, right?

I like the bittersweetness of this job and getting on location; I'll be honest, that's generally the biggest adventure, getting on location. So, this is kind of a typical stance for me when I'm shooting climbing, hanging like 1,000 ft off the ground on a rope. I've got my little poles to keep me stable so I can roll video or take photos or whatever it is, just waiting for the climbers to come up. That was in the Verdon Gorge, which is here.

The Verdon Gorge is in France; it's pretty much considered Europe's Grand Canyon and it's a place with a rich climbing history. In 2014, I did a story in a short film for National Geographic Adventure on the beautiful gorge and its history. We had so much fun playing on the big great canyon walls.

Two years ago, I did a great road trip for National Geographic Travel where I started up in Montana, in the mountains near Glacier National Park, ending all the way down in the southeast side in the desert areas. I got to experience everything in between. And National Geographic, you never know what they're going to throw you, right? You get these great calls and they're like, "We got a great job for you," and it's always exciting.

Last summer, I got to trek from Switzerland all the way down to the French Riviera, following the GR5 trail system. I got to see so many different places in the Alps. I wish I could have stayed there the entire summer; it was unbelievably beautiful. The assignments, you never know how long they're going to be. As Stie had mentioned, there was a six-week assignment in Antarctica and I’d actually think it was 54 days in length. So, I think it was even a little longer than that; it was two months.

And this assignment here, this was two days, so you never know what you're going to get; it's everything in the middle. This is a really fun project. This was about these people in Colorado that they Ice Race; they soup up their Jeeps, they put spikes on their tires, and they Ice Race all winter long. I got to make a short little film on it.

And here's the film: "The minute I put my helmet on, strap in, and it's time to hit the gas pedal, there's some sort of switch that just goes off, and it's like total serene, total peace. I'm in my own zone, and I'm ready to fly. I'm a third-generation ice racer. I grew up with my dad and my grandpa in the shop. Racing's definitely in my blood. I've loved it, not just for the fact that I think that I've been around it, but I do think I was born to be here, to drive, to build stuff. I take everything that I build to heart. It's a piece of me.

The different tones and sounds of engines; it's curiosity to me. I love it. Probably the biggest thing to any race car is the engine next to the driver. There's this huge sense of accomplishment when I build something. Working on a vehicle, especially my own, is extremely therapeutic. It's like total peace; there's no other experience, nothing else like it."

I truly love building something, seeing it come to shape, come to life. You give it your own personal touch, and you take that to the track and then, in turn, see what your driving capability can do. The town of Georgetown relies on us to give them a number reading in the morning before anybody goes out. Somebody will walk out, physically drill that lake to see where we're at.

It's common to have clubs or organizations such as the Daytona 500 with NASCAR, NHRA, and drag racing. "Our gang"—that's our club, our gang. Generations after generations have played a huge part in keeping the club going. I hope that it continues to grow, and, you know, our kids and the next kids and the next kids complete the cycle.

Competition's always been fierce at Georgetown, but there's always been competition that pushes me to the next level. When I go to race, my main objective is to win. I know that I'm going to go there with a chance that I might get beat, and that's fine, but that's what makes that risk all that much more important.

You're definitely not going to get rich off of ice racing. You're going to get rich in friends, passion, and experience, but not in money. You spend countless hours building this Jeep to go have seconds of fun, but when you do it, it completely pays for itself. You forget how many hours, how sore your fingers, how sore your hands are, how tired you are when you go hit that gas and you spend time with your family, and you put somebody's smile on their face that you give a ride to. It's breathtaking.

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it; that was such a fun job. And, um, I thought ice climbing was barbaric; this was crazy that they could only race on a track for so long, because it just tears it up and guts it, then they have enough to like move over to another one to kind of keep going. And I got to take a ride in one of the Jeeps, you know, and they’re 900 horsepower, so they're unbelievably burly and fast.

You know, you had to strap in with all the craziest seat belts, like, five different ways in case it rolled. When that guy, Jimmy Olsen, hit the gas, it would like... you could pop a wheelie; it was crazy! It was a lot of fun working with them. I've never worked around people that are that into cars before, so it was really fun.

In 2013, I went and did what was maybe one of the most fun rock climbing trips I've ever had in my life. It was my assignment after Antarctica, and I almost feel like National Geographic threw me a bone; they're like, "Okay, you suffered, now you're going to go have this really fun one."

I got to go with three of my really good friends: Matt Seigal, Cedar Wright, and Emily Harrington; they were the climbers. I got to team up with Carsten Peter, who is an absolute legendary photographer; he's a real hero of mine. Carsten does a lot of the cave stories you see in the magazine, subterranean work.

His lighting work is amazing; he's a really, really diligent artistic person. This picture right here, he's actually holding a drone that just freshly crashed while he was flying around the big spire on the left. You know, things like that happen on these trips all the time, but going to these places, we went to these formations that were amazing.

What a CST is, it's a geological formation—it takes millions of years for them to form. But they basically start like usually limestone mountains, and water gets inside of them, and the water acidifies as it sort of mixes with the limestone and it eats caves and caverns into the walls. The water spills out, wind comes in, and the next thing you know, you have a beautiful arch or you have a spire, and you can see this like dripping rock; they're actually constantly forming.

Anytime there's rain, the water, as it drips down and acidifies, is building stalactites all the time. Well, it's a perfect jungle gym for rock climbing, right? So, this is like a 600-foot arch. This is my friend Cedar and Matt on the wall, and I'm going to show you the short film we made while we were down there.

Traveling to China is really one of the more unique travel experiences that I've had; it's one of the most diverse landscapes that I've ever experienced. It's like you've walked into a painting of prehistoric landscapes. These ancient karst formations have been sculpted by wind and water and millions of years of erosion into these beautiful natural sculptures.

As a rock climber, you look at these rock formations and you can't help but be inspired. For me, it's important not just to go and see these amazing landscapes, but to interact with them. To get to climb on them is just the experience of a lifetime. The stone here offers up gymnastic athletic movement, but it can also be very adventurous, sometimes dangerous, but always beautiful.

This is what we love to do: to come to these beautiful natural areas and climb and explore and push ourselves mentally and physically. China is relatively unexplored and new to climbers and to adventurers who want to go out and see something new and spectacular.

These limestone karsts are some of the most beautiful rock formations in the world. You go into a landscape like this, and it affects you and it changes you as a person, and it inspires you as a climber. That's really the biggest part of it; it's something that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life.

Thank you! That really was such a fun trip. I mean, even seeing Emily dancing on the top of the tower at the end, it was just goofing off and having fun the whole time. And these climbers, that's when they're in their element, you know? When they're getting to do this, it was just a carte blanche canvas. It was like, "Climb that! Climb that!"

And for Carson, it was great for the photos; this gave scale to the size of these gigantic formations and it was great for me as well from the film side. And, um, yeah, so fun! I grew up in Colorado; it’s really where I found adventure. You know, I was lucky. When I was at the age of two, my parents moved us from New Jersey to Colorado Springs. It was the ultimate background to have, right? I had this fantastic backyard, and we embraced Colorado quite quickly.

This is me when I was a little kid. I loved getting dirty, skinning my knees, catching snakes, and all things, you know? Any excuse to get out and get dirty, I was all about it. Every weekend, you know, we would be up in the mountains fishing and camping, and it was just the most fun place to grow up. I became very passionate about the outdoors.

The other thing I was incredibly passionate about was skateboarding. My brother got me into skateboarding; I have an older brother, he's three years older, his name is Scott. Anything Scott was into, I typically would get into as well. So, when he got into skateboarding, I naturally did too.

Well, I'm about 18 years old in this picture here. Scott had already moved out of the house; I had just moved out of the house. We would talk on the phone all the time; we'd still meet up and go skate. On this particular day, he showed up and he had a camera with him, and it wasn't usual because my brother's really artistic. He can draw, do pottery, paint—he does all this. So when he showed up with the camera, I was like, "Oh, it's just one more thing that Scott's into; that's cool."

He said, "Hey, I brought a camera today and I thought we could take turns taking photos of each other while we skated, you know? We'll go all around the city today and go to our favorite places." I was like, "That's great, but I don't know how to use a camera." I've never... He was like, "No worries, man! I'll show you how to do it; it's super easy."

And he did. It was real basic; he kind of gave me the basics, and sure enough, we took pictures of one another. I saw him about three days later, and he went to like Walmart and got double prints, right? He gave me the prints, and I was flipping through them, and I was pretty taken back by it. I was like, "This is amazing,” you know? And it kind of planted a seed in me.

About two or three months later, I got an income tax return check from whatever job I had that last year, and it was like 200 bucks. So I called my brother up and I was like, "Dude, I just got my income tax return check; I want to get a camera." I said, "Would you help me buy one?" He was like, "Yeah, of course!"

So we went to a pawn shop, and for 200 bucks, I walked out with the same camera he did because I didn't want anything complicated. I was like, "This makes sense." So he tried to convince me actually to get something else. I got a Pentax K1000—fantastic camera—and off I went.

But I didn't really have any ambitions of being a photographer, right? I just wanted to go take pictures of funny things that were happening in my life, and maybe stuff like the skateboarding. The types of pictures I wanted to shoot were pictures like this, you know? The crazy friends I was hanging out with in my life, the people that I skateboarded with.

This guy here, a friend of mine, he, you know, while he was asleep at night, one of my buddies went in and just shaved his head as a practical joke. He took it in such great stride; he wore the haircut for like a week. It was hilarious! And on that same camping trip, you know, we were jumping off cliffs and cliff diving and things.

When I look at this picture, I don't remember my friend making this amazing dive off the cliff; all I remember is the belly flop because he landed in the water in the exact same position. Quickly, I realized like, wow, you know, photography, it's this cool time capsule, right? You get to relive memories.

After trips, you know, we would all get prints; we’d get to look at things and relive them. I really fell in love. I almost won the lottery; I had five numbers. I was one digit, one number off! The winning number was 38; I had 39. I was like really close, right? I actually picked the numbers, which is the craziest thing, you know?

Would it have just... just really... right? But you know, that's a memory that was what I wanted my camera for originally. But I started slowly taking it into the mountains with me on my little weekend trips and after work, and I slowly started to kind of find a real love and passion for it.

I bought a how-to landscape photography book by this guy, John Shaw, and this kind of became my gospel, you know? I would just pour through this thing and learn like technical aptitude. I quickly realized that the camera was sort of a new reason to go outside. I really started falling in love with the hunt.

I started looking at the map of Colorado in a completely different way. You know, this is in Rocky Mountain National Park. I'd never been to Rocky Mountain National Park, and this was the perfect reason like, I'm going to go spend the weekend up there, or find like some new waterfall or go visit the sand dunes, you know? It was this new little reason to go have different adventures.

I found myself getting up early in the morning to chase sunrises, and I was finding this newfound motivation. I was working at Hewlett-Packard at the time; I worked in IT. I slowly made some relationships with the people in the Imaging and Printing division, which is in San Diego.

I had this really great situation where I was giving them photos for free, and for them it was actually probably better because they weren't having to pay for these pictures. But what they were doing is they were taking these landscape pictures I had to trade shows and you'd see them at like Best Buy where they're selling their new printer.

In exchange, I was getting free printers and unlimited ink and paper. So I was like scanning and printing everything and just giving it away to my friends, and it was so much fun, right? I just had this carte blanche access. I mean, I had so many 13 by 19s; it was the biggest you could do.

It was just like even if I kind of liked the photo, I was like maybe it's better big, you know? It just printed out, so it was so fun having this access.