All Categories

“Do you know you have a heart murmur?” the urgent care doctor asked. Exactly four years ago, on July fourth, 2022, after a ten-mile bicycle ride in San Clemente, California, my body felt different. I couldn’t focus my eyes. My legs were shaking. Odd, I thought. I do this all the time. I sat on the porch steps, head in hand, drinking water, barely able to move. That night, in uncontrollable waves, I went from shivering, to teeth-chattering cold, to sweating. I needed to urin

Looking backwards to see the path forward

My Editor Wanted Urban. I Found Chi. “Ron, we need you to think urban,” challenged my editor at FPG International, one of the leading stock photography agencies in the 1990s. “Your work is getting noticed, but now we need not only urban but a more international look.” Charlotte was far from looking like an international city. Most of my shoots were mainstream for the time: blonde, blue-eyed families having fun on the beach. The images sold well. No complaints. My editor was e

“Mr. Ron, you’re next,” said Jessica, the manager of Maui Wound Care Clinic, with a smile. The technicians helped me onto the gurney and rolled me into the narrow acrylic tube. For the next two hours, I would breathe one hundred percent oxygen in a hyperbaric chamber pressurized to the equivalent of being thirty-three feet underwater, a desperate attempt to push oxygen into my right foot. The goal was to save what the emergency vascular surgery had put at risk. In early Augus

“I don’t want to kiss him anymore!” That was the message from Lauren Burnham, one of the women vying for the attention of Arie Luyendyk Jr. on The Bachelor. Our helicopter was in close air formation with a tour airplane contracted for a tour over the Nazca Lines in Peru. The only passengers on the tour airplane were Arie and Lauren in one of the more memorable scenes from The Bachelor during Season 22, Episode 9. The director wanted an extreme close-up shot of the happy co

A Wrangler shoot, a barbershop, and a prophecy come true.

Late afternoon light, an empty road, and the mental high of the perfect frame

A night in 1980s New York that ended with two empty pockets and a flight to catch

A Myrtle Beach Fourth of July