How long have you been at Stanford?

September 2022 marks 32 years at Stanford for me. I arrived at Stanford in September 1990 for medical school and haven’t left. I undertook five years of medical school training, followed by three years of internal medicine residency training; five years of combined hematology/oncology fellowship training, including a master’s in clinical epidemiology; and one and a half years as an instructor in hematology, leading to my hire as assistant professor of hematology in 2005. I’ve been faculty for over 17 years. Although I describe myself as a “Stanford lifer,” I have some catching up to do relative to some of my mentors, who have been at Stanford for five to six decades, including the legendary hematologists Stan Schrier and Peter Greenberg.

When did you first become interested in photography?

When my sister and I were growing up in Queens, New York, and then New Jersey, my father was incessantly placing us in front of his camera. I can remember being annoyed by how often we were asked to pose for the lens, but his refrain was that we would someday appreciate having all these family photos. After retirement, his bedroom closet in Boca Raton, Florida, doubled as a sort of Library of Congress of his Kodachrome slide carousels. He has since digitized most of his collection. Every few months, he would email me a 40–50+ year-old photo: our young family decked out in ’70s fashion with the architectural décor of the day — plaid pants that matched our couch, oversized collars, and our faux wood–paneled den. His habit of emailing digitized photos greatly accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when travel was put on hold. His photos were no longer an annoyance; they served up a nostalgic version of “The Story of Us” in order to cope with a world tossed upside down by the virus.

During the early days of the pandemic, new television production was put on hiatus, and many channels reverted to airing “The Best of” series from 30–40 years ago, including classic TV game shows or era-defining sports battles. Together with my father’s photos, these visual cues fed a rush of childhood memories. Most were very special, but some I had not thought about for decades and had purposefully put behind me. Sometimes, when the dam breaks, you can’t control how the floodwaters run. Everyone takes something different away from a photograph.

My love affair with photography began around the time of my Stanford medical school graduation in 1995, when I spent a month in Maui. I traveled the island, seeking the golden hours to photograph landscapes and sunsets and to gain experience with macro shots. I had my father’s camera in hand and one of my own — both traditional film cameras. It was during this trip that I left auto-focus behind and began experimenting with shutter speed and aperture so I could develop the craft of manual exposure. I purchased a tripod and graduated density filters, read countless books on composition and lighting, and tried to practice some of Ansel Adams’ photography fundamentals, including the art of pre-visualization. My growing interest in photography occurred in parallel with the revolution in digital cameras as well as post-processing software.

What’s your favorite thing about photography?

Photography serves many functions for me. First, traveling to the national parks and other landscapes is restorative. It’s quality, quiet time with my wife, Lenn, who loves to hike. While caring for patients with leukemia has been immensely rewarding, the journey is filled with too many fleeting acquaintances — close relationships with patients (and also mentors) who have passed, as well as trainees who have moved on from our program. I find the national parks are a counterbalance to this blur of human turnover. The parks will always be there when I choose to return. My favorite spots will change little during my lifetime. This constancy is comforting. A pause in the middle of nature — a little bit of stasis to recalibrate an otherwise hectic life — is more than welcome. However, I do worry that the assault of climate change on the parks may require me to adjust my expectations of what the parks will look like when I return.

How do you get a really good photograph?

Getting the good shot requires several things: knowing how to get the most out of your camera’s functionality, tack-sharp lenses, a sturdy (but lightweight) tripod, a cable release so I don’t have to touch my camera, and, most importantly, waiting for the right light. And sprinkle in patience, pre-trip research, and luck. I’ll set up my tripod for hours around the golden hours to get my shot. For all the times I’ve checked all these boxes, I can count many more times where I’ve failed miserably. I remember one time in Kyoto, Japan, where I was bumbling around with my clunky tripod taking pictures of architecture of the Geisha district because I had given up on capturing an actual geisha. Lenn tapped my shoulder, and I turned around and barely glimpsed a geisha before she ran into an ochiya, one of the teahouses used for entertaining guests. Meanwhile, my wife caught an amazing still of the geisha with a blurred background on her iPhone, one of my all-time favorite photographs. Sometimes you have to know when to free yourself of your tripod.

Perhaps part of the zen of photography, like other aspects of life, is managing expectations. When you hit the road or hop on a plane for a shoot, it’s like playing casino slots. You don’t know if you’ll hit triple 7s with a stunner photo or leave empty-handed. Mother Nature has a lot to say, and I’m often playing the Goldilocks game with her. I don’t want completely clear skies or completely cloudy skies, but just enough clouds to create interesting patterns of reflected light. I’ve stopped becoming dispirited about trips washed out by weather — as the next trip could end up with a surfeit of photo ops. It all evens out in the end. However, if I can get two or three photos a year that I really love, that’s a good year.

How do you think your hobby has influenced your work at Stanford?

Photography can be a wonderful icebreaker. Patients open up about their own trips and memories, and many times this segues into their own love of photography or other hobbies. Such conversations allow me and the patient to learn more about each other and our families. It’s an organic conversation but can serve as a useful distraction from the constant focus on their illness. For my colleagues, I hope my photos excite them to travel. Certainly, I get excited when I hear their travel stories. And similar to our patients, it opens up an opportunity to discuss their lives and how they are pursuing their passions outside of the hospital.

I am a huge fan of the chef Anthony Bourdain, although he apparently preferred the label “writer” or “storyteller.” After his suicide in 2018, many pontificated about what made him and his food and travel show Parts Unknown so special. His suicide devastated many people who had no personal relationship to him. I am one of them. Why? He had a preternatural ability to break bread with and listen to people from disparate cultures — sometimes marginalized or poorly resourced, or with viewpoints that may reside on the other side of the political spectrum. He was an empath who rooted for the underdog and cast his guests in a dignified light. In the documentary about his life, Roadrunner, one of his friends explained, “It was almost never about food. It was about Tony learning how to be a better person.” His life and suicide reminded me of the line from Alan Ball’s 1999 film American Beauty, where the character Ricky Fitts says, “Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it.”

Looking forward, I see photography, like Bourdain’s sit-down meals, as a means of engaging other peoples and extending my worldview. I was able to accomplish this to some degree with the Maasai. I can’t help but think this would add great value and perspective to my professional and personal life.