I've been reading Clive Cussler since I was 12 years old. He writes adventure fiction with nautical themes and has published over 65 books over the course of his career. I transitioned from being a reader to a collector of his novels in my late 20s, and I eventually became his photographer in 2005. However, my portraits of Clive only appeared on the back of non-Dirk Pitt novels. You see, Dirk Pitt is his most famous character and the novels featuring Dirk were the ones that launched his career. They are also the books that feature a photograph of Clive with a classic car from his museum that also happens to appear in the novel. For any Clive Cussler fan, those photographs are symbolic of every Dirk Pitt novel. Finally, in 2012, his son and co-author Dirk Cussler called and asked me to fly to Denver Colorado to photograph him and his father for the back of Putnam's next Dirk Pitt novel, "Poseidon's Arrow." As a fan of Clive Cussler and as a professional photographer, it was my dream come true. My portraits of Clive Cussler have appeared on hundreds of millions of books published around the world. For me there is no greater complement.
