Three decades ago we were fresh-faced kids working on a college newspaper. Jeff was the boss and Mason made the photos. Late nights glaring at the tiny screens of Macintosh SE’s, gnawing on cheap pizza and swilling bad coffee... that's where this all started. Let's see where it's headed.
About Mason Marsh
Born in Seattle and raised in Spokane, I enjoyed a childhood filled with outdoor adventures in the eclectic landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. In high school and again in college, I gravitated toward journalism and the excitement of capturing the world around me and sharing it with others.
With a degree in Journalism in my pocket, I spent a hungry year working as a freelance photojournalist for the Associated Press and the Spokesman-Review newspaper. I landed my first full-time job working as the sole photographer at a small daily paper in Kenai, Alaska where my love of the outdoors put me face-to-face with angry moose and calving glaciers. I later moved down to the Oregon Coast to work at another tiny daily paper, where I worked too many late nights covering too many tragic events. When a historic replica tall ship came to town, I covered its arrival and plotted my escape from the grind of daily newspapering.
On board the Lady Washington, I travelled the length of the U.S. west coast teaching people of all ages about maritime history. After two adventurous years at sea I moved to Seattle and took a job teaching aerospace at the incredible Museum of Flight. I then moved to Wisconsin to develop curriculum and introduce kids to airplanes at the Experimental Aircraft Association. In the midwest I heard the call of the sea and returned to the Lady Washington to develop their education programs and earn my Captain’s License.
With my wild oats well sown, I settled in Portland, Oregon and worked teaching maritime skills, disaster preparedness and first aid. Finally finding focus, I ended up at Eldershostel (now known as Road Scholar) where I designed and lead educational travel programs. It was with Elderhostel where I brought my careers in photography and education together in photo workshops on the enchanting Oregon Coast.
When my lovely wife, Julie, and I decided to have kids, I scaled back my work to stay home so my wife could continue to find success in her career. We now have two children, Cooper and Claire, and I sneak away to make photographs and lead workshops when I can. It’s a charmed life.
- Mason Marsh
About Jeff Carlson
My path to photography started with a typewriter. Originally hailing from Twin Falls, Idaho (notable for being the site of Evel Knieval’s failed rocket jump of the Snake River Canyon, the hometown of “Deep Throat” Watergate source Mark Felt and Mad Men and Firefly actress Christina Hendricks, and a few seconds of screen time in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), I was a nerdy kid who liked to read and play video games. I also enjoyed writing, partly because my imagination was filled with stories and partly because it meant I could use my mom’s manual typewriter.
I followed that writerly inclination in high school writing for the school paper. The newspaper also introduced me to the Macintosh and PageMaker 1.0, which supplanted that typewriter and a Commodore 64 home computer.
I continued working on the newspaper at Whitworth College (now University), eventually becoming editor for two years. Despite my journalistic experience, I pursued an English degree and exited college looking for work as a graphic designer. After a stint at a language translation company doing page layout—all those long nights in the newspaper office assembling PageMaker layouts on the Mac certainly prepared me for a career—I went to work as managing editor of a small publisher of technology how-to books.
That short-lived job became a professional turning point. The owner decided to fold the publishing company in favor of a side business running technology conferences, and fired me in the most gracious, generous way possible. We still had a few books in development by independent authors, so I took that leap that every writer dreams of far earlier than I expected: going solo. Those projects led to freelance writing for Adobe Magazine, Macworld, and TidBITS, where I was managing editor for several years, and eventually my own published how-to books on topics ranging from PalmPilots to Macs to iPads.
(Don’t worry, photography does finally come into the narrative.) At one point, I bought a super-zoom camera for a vacation in South Africa, and caught the photography bug. I’d owned consumer point-and-shoot cameras early on, such as the early Kodak Disc cameras, but this was my introduction to more deliberate photography. That interest snowballed into DSLRs and photography more broadly, at which point my book publisher took note (“He can write and take photos?”) and signed me up for books covering Canon PowerShot cameras and software such as Adobe Photoshop Elements.
For the last several years my professional work has focused primarily on photo education, via books, ebooks, articles, podcasting, workshops, video, and related contract work.
I currently write for outlets such as DPReview, CreativePro, and Macworld, and am a contributing editor for TidBITS.
I’m the author of numerous books, most recently including Adobe Lightroom: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features, The Photographer’s Guide to Luminar AI, Take Control of Your Digital Photos, Take Control of Your Digital Storage, Take Control of Managing Your Files, Take Control of Apple Watch.
I live in Seattle, Washington with my amazing wife, our talented teen, and one parakeet.