Advice Network Founders Blog

Many people ask me who I am, and what my background is. I am happy to share.

I do not have a technology background. I am a photographer. I do weddings, corporate events, portraits, art, and travel photography. My work can be seen at http://www.schoenfeldt.com.

I spent a year (actually two semesters) attending the University of Texas at Austin. After my freshman year I took a year off of college to travel in Europe. After a summer and fall in Europe, I was getting a little bored. Now, all off my life I had wanted to go to India, but I wanted to go to the moon too, I didn’t think it was really possible. Then I met some people in a youth hostel with a copy of “The Lonely Planet Travel Guide to India.”  Suddenly I could see, it’s not impossible. I can go there, I can do this.

I flew from Amsterdam to New Delhi, and set off overland from there. After 6 months, my visa expired and I traveled to Nepal. At some point I realized that my year off of college was up, and I needed to go back and re-enroll. Only, I didn’t want to. I felt I was learning more about the world traveling then I could in college.

For the camera aficionados out there, I was shooting at the time with a trusty, heck downright indestructible Minolta SRT 101. The camera was a little older than me.

From Nepal I went to Thailand. Thailand to Laos, back thru Thailand to Malaysia, then to Indonesia, and a short flight from Bali took me to Darwin Australia. At this point I had been in South East Asia for a year. I remember how quiet Darwin was. It was disorienting. All of the countries I had spent the last year in had so much life and hustle and bustle.

I spent six months in Australia, most of that time in Sydney, and then back to the USA, where I moved to California. I’ve been back to Asia a few times since then, but the past 7 years have been more about building my photography business, and building a family. I have a beautiful wife, and a wonderful 4 year old daughter.