Paul Kennedy - bio

He's shot oil-drilling operations in the high Arctic; a host of African animals in Namibia and just about every other subject you can imagine in between. But one of his personal favorites is food! Like the meals he cooks, nearly everyday, he likes simple, rustic, subtly stylized dishes and one of his favorite ethnic styles is, Italian!

A professional photographer, for 35 years, Paul Kennedy began his career as a stringer for a high school yearbook company; a year later he was stringing for the Associated Press; two years later, he got his first assignment for Sports Illustrated. Five covers and a two-year stint as a contract photographer later, he left SI for the realm of corporate photography. A brief pause to serve as one of the official photographers of the 1984 Olympic Games was followed by 20 years shooting corporate annual reports.

A Canon shooter since the '84 games, he shoots primarily 35mm and was one of the early converts to digital. Today, the majority of his assignments involve high-tech and medical photography, but a recent trip to Africa to shoot elephants, for a research study, illustrates his "go anywhere, shoot anything" attitude.

At 62, married for 37 years, with 3 grown children, he doesn't even contemplate retirement. "When I get up in the morning, to go to work, I'm going to play, and people pay me to do it."