“You should get these published, Marlo.”

This is what I had been hearing from family, friends, and colleagues over the years when I’d share a set of photos of my travels and photography projects. I brushed them off as polite comments, like the ones I got for dinners I prepared, but certainly not for my karaoke sessions. Finally, a journalist friend, Arin Greenwood, asked me to travel to Guam to take photos for a magazine article she had been commissioned to write, and so started my dabbling into the paid world of photography. A few more assignments with Arin, a few I landed on my own, and, POOF, I could now call myself a freelance photographer.

My next validation came after my sister encouraged me to submit an image to a photo contest sponsored by the Smithsonian Museum, and I received a FedEx envelope a few months later congratulating me on the winning entry for the category, “Culture and the Arts.”

Hide and Seek in the Sculpture — Smithsonian Photo Contest

I guess I was legit by that point, so I began exhibiting with studios in NYC, London, Barcelona, Tokyo, Paris, Milan, Naples, and Nice.

I still have my day job as an in-house attorney in Silicon Valley, so that continues to subsidize my passions for photography and travel.