I grew up in England, Holland, and – eventually – America. At seventeen I moved to New York City to go to Juilliard and be an actress. When I got tired of working in restaurants and auditioning for ridiculous TV commercials I started figuring out what I really wanted to do. That’s when I bought my first camera and started traveling. It turned out to be a great move. I spent a lot of time exploring wonderful places and figuring out which button on the camera did what, and plenty of time in the darkroom getting lightheaded from the poor ventilation systems while I learned to process film and print my photographs.

Finally, after long periods of travel in, among other places,West Africa and India, I settled down for a while and took some classes, worked at a photo agency, worked in a lab retouching photographs, and assisted a lot. I learned most of what I know about photography by shooting tons of film, spending lots of long nights in the darkroom, making mistakes, and hanging around with people who knew more than me.

Now I live in San Francisco with my husband and my daughter and it’s a toss up most days whether I’d rather be taking pictures or writing. Since I love doing both, I’m happy either way.