As a child in Milwaukee, I plastered my bedroom walls and ceiling with photographs of sports heroes. My mother Doris declared the pictures a fire hazard, tore them down and gave me a Polaroid Swinger to take my own pictures. As a teen, an upstairs tenant, Mr. King, a night-owl party photographer, lent me a 35 mm film camera and his darkroom. My dad Samuel let me take over his basement storage room for my own darkroom.

In high school, I shot for Milwaukee’s Black newspapers. At the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, I apprenticed for the Associated Press at pro and college sports events. A photo from a Green Bay Packers football game was Honorable Mention in “Best Sports Stories of 1977.”

A former columnist at the Boston Globe and former fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists, my hobby often accompanies my writing, from national park grandeur to environmental injustice, and from wildlife conservation to Barack Obama’s election as the United States’ first Black president. My images have been exhibited in Boston’s Museum of African American History and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.