The night Katrina went through New Orleans Steve’s assignment was in the SuperDome. For the next three months he covered the aftermath while living the effects of the storm on his own family and home. The experience was life changing.
Steve moved his family to a safer area and is now the Chief Photojournalist at WIS-TV, Columbia, SC.
During his years in New Orleans at WDSU, Steve served as Senior Photojournalist and Chief Photographer and became a regular faculty member of the National Press Photographers Association’s Annual Television News Workshop.
He gained his reputation by delivering “production quality lighting at the speed of news”. In addition to lighting workshops, he conducts seminars on storytelling techniques in this age of "run and gun" television newsgathering to photojournalists around the world, particularly for the U.S. military.
Steve had previously worked as a Chief Photographer in the Carolinas, and before that in Great Britain with the BBC and ITV. He had not settled upon a career until well after graduating from the University of Miami and serving in the army, including a year in Vietnam as a combat commander. That experience focused his life and he knew what he wanted to do. Upon leaving active duty he moved to England. Two years later he graduated from The London Film School and entered the motion picture industry. Occasionally he freelanced in news. He quickly learned that news photography allowed him more control over his work than he ever had in the movies. That is when he joined the television industry. Ten years later, he returned to the states for a short vacation but stayed.
Today, Steve approaches a news story as if it were a motion picture; striving for the best storytelling techniques he can muster. The time constraint of news work however, is a severe obstacle in achieving that quality. Over the years, he has developed a number of tricks and techniques to keep the quality high with little or no loss of time. He enjoys sharing these ideas and learning new ones from other photographers.
Steve's highest achievements include election to two terms on the NPPA Board of Directors as the Television Board Representative, two Emmys, three Associated Press Photojournalist of the Year awards from Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina and several Radio Television News Directors Association Photographer of the Year awards.