Jason Houston

I was in eleventh grade when I sold my first image to a national publication. In the twenty-five years since, thousands of my images have appeared in hundreds of stories in print, online, and broadcast media. Clients include The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Smithsonian, Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, BIKE, Discover, Newsweek, Business Week, GEO, CNN, ABC, New York Magazine, Gastronomica, Culture, The Sierra Club, Slow Food, The United Nations, Farm Aid, National Wildlife Federation, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Conservation International, Waterkeepers, Edutopia, The Nature Conservancy, and many others.

I started by photographing things I liked to do—rock climbing, cycling, kayaking, and fly fishing—first for magazines and books and eventually for companies that made related gear. Chris King Precision Components hired me to shoot some of their cycling catalogs, then to do graphic design, and eventually to run the company’s marketing and sales efforts during a period of explosive growth in the mid-1990's.

In 2000 I left my native California to join Orion magazine, a literary and artistic bimonthly about the dynamics between people and nature. In 2003 I took over as picture editor, about the same time that Hal (Take One Creative’s other co-founder) joined the magazine’s staff. Our creative collaborations included dozens of editorial and multi-media projects for Orion and several successful independent short films: Cowboy Yoga, Stone River, eel*water*rock*man, and Picture the Leviathan, all of which have played at various film festivals around the country.

While at Orion I continued to build my career as a project photographer. In 2006 I began photographing for Rare, an international conservation group, in Nicaragua. I've since undertaken a dozen trips to photograph and film Rare's work in places like Kenya, mainland and Baja Mexico, Seychelles, Belize, Ecuador, and Indonesia. On some of these trips I took on more than just photography, bringing Hal into the mix, and Rare became Take One Creative’s first client.

Other jobs I've had? Rock climbing guide in Joshua Tree and Tuolumne Meadows; kayaking guide in Santa Barbara (ocean) and the Kern River (whitewater); bicycle mechanic wrenching team bikes; barista; dad.

Take One Creative combines all of my experience toward achieving my some of my highest goals in life: Doing what I want to do, and having what I do matter.