Jeff Buttel

Born on Long Island, in New York, the son of college professors with happy feet, I have also lived in Cincinnati, Beloit WI, Philadelphia, Rhode Island, Cape Cod, Maine, and Boston. So I guess I inherited those happy feet. I studied art as an undergrad, with an emphasis on photography, and went to work as a carpenter after graduation. That was followed by a year of living off the grid in West Virginia, which didn’t go particularly well. I ended up doing carpentry and contracting again. Watching my peers descend into alcoholism, and becoming a single parent, I decided change was in order and went back to school to get an engineering degree. Eventually that led to a job working for a friend when he started a company. I joined the company as the third employee, and because the company did well I was able to retire at 50. In my sixties I went back to school to earn a masters degree in photography, working mostly in video. I spend most of my time in my woods, cutting firewood, making trails, and clearing land. I would like to get back to doing photography.