I simply enjoy telling people’s stories. My journey has taken me to the Navajo Nation, Malawi, India, Austria, Afghanistan, Scotland, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Belize and Guatemala.

I am an Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS. I am also the author of The iPhone Photographer, iPhone Photography for Everybody, and iPhone Photography for Everyone: Artistic Techniques with my publisher Amherst Media.

I have had multiple short films screened in the Outside the Box Bakersfield Film Festival as well as the premiere of the documentary film The Trafficked Life at the Fox Theater in Bakersfiel. I was the Assistant Photo Editor at The Bakersfield Californian for six years, focused on multimedia, video and web projects for the photo staff, curated the SEEN page and worked with the front page designer. Most recently I was the Director of Strategic communication (filmmaker-in-residence) at the United Way of Kern County.

I am a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology’s College of Imaging Arts and Sciences. I was also the National Press Photographers Association’s Photographer of the Year for 2005 for New York state and Ontario and Quebec provinces.

I served for eight years on the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Self-Development of People Committee, focusing on mission interpretation for the world-wide ministry. In 2015 I was the Tour Coordinator for the Tour Against Trafficking. I was also the Coordinator of the Kern Coalition Against Human Trafficking in Bakersfield.

A paraphrased quote from Hugh Brody speaks to me about the photographer’s mind as one of, “Humanity’s most sophisticated combination of detailed knowledge and intuition. It is where direct experience and metaphor unite in a joint concern to know and use the truth.”

I am married to the Rev. Deborah De Boer and we live in Oxford, with our daughter and son and cat. You can often find me out on my bicycle or at my ‘office’ at Uptown Coffee when I am not holding a camera up to my eye.

You can follow me on Instagram @mfphotog or on Twitter @skip_fagans.