Biography

Tom’s “life’s work” involved college graduation from The Citadel with a Regular Army commission as an Infantry officer. His 30 1/2 Army years were extremely satisfying and involved plenty of travel, including 7 overseas assignments (with 3 combat tours) and 3 years of teaching at West Point. His photography introduction came during his mid-20s, but was strictly at amateur level and only during Army off-duty time.

After Army retirement, Tom earned both photography degrees from Northern Virginia Community College. He found NVPS 18 years ago and has been a Board member for most of those years, having held 7 positions, including Secretary, Treasurer, VP for Competition, VP for Programs & President. He has been named Photographer of the Year four times, with three Images of the Year. He received from Nature Visions (nature exhibit) the overall 3d place award several years ago. Among his most important training has been to take almost all of Joseph Miller’s workshops & Freeman Patterson’s South Africa workshop. Tom has been awarded the NVPS Distinguished Service Award and NVPS’s highest award, The Joe Atchison Award For Outstanding Service.

Presentation

Tom’s 6th trip to Africa was spent exploring parts of Namibia and Botswana. He was treated to dunes of red sand that are 1,000 feet high (with shadows that are black), an abandoned diamond mining village that has been reclaimed by the desert sand, wildlife of all descriptions including a herd of 96 elephants (counted by our group leader) which made a single-file river crossing, packs of lionesses on the hunt, very energetic, feisty and  fast-moving baboons, a rocky beach with “100,000” seals (not counted by our group leader, Richard Bernabe), birds with food in their beaks or talons, other wild animals in search of food or water, and, hard-working, peaceful people.