About Dan & Janine

What started as being a rock climber, then a sponsored rock climber, then a slideshow presenter of rock climbing, became a bumpy ride on the road to a career and life in photography. In 1991 I was asked by companies supporting me to do slideshows at REI’s throughout the west coast. After a couple years making photos of climbing and not making a dime from it, I decided this was the life for me, although the money part still needed figuring out.

So I packed my bags and headed to Alaska, not to climb, not to make photos, but to commercial fish. Ah ha, now I had the money part figured out, just not from photos. Once that epic ended I promptly departed for 6 months in Tuscany to shoot photos and try to figure out the whole photo/money combination. Great fun though it was, beside some print sales, I came up short on the career end.

Plan #3: Time to get serious. Off I went to the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara for a three year program. Finally, here it started coming together. Now I was spending money to learn about photography, but the concept of making a living from it still seemed kind of far fetched.

Then, one fine day I walked into the office of my teacher and met this French girl, who really wasn’t French at all, but had this accent that sort of sounded French. I was hooked, and she turned out to be Swiss, from the German part no less, even better than French. Janine Durrer became a part of my life and to this day laughs at how bad my portfolio was that memorable day. From that moment on, once we had joined forces, my path became our path and together our energy became a commitment to this business that has never faltered.

Today, more than 10 years since that meeting, we are having more fun than ever being professional photographers of Mountain Sports and Lifestyle Images. The journey started homeless, living in our VW Westfalia before settling into a dreamy little house in Bishop, California that Janine personally remodeled, to finally today, having a home in the Italian Dolomites. We firmly believe that the success of our business comes not from seeking success, but rather seeking a lifestyle of making images that we feel proud of, and that make our clients proud to have represent their products.

Throughout the years our photos and services have been used by such clients as National Geographic, Patagonia, Gore-Tex, The North Face, REI, Nature’s Path, Runner’s World, and countless others.

Our Portfolio may be seen at : PatitucciPhoto.com

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For DolomiteSport, our adventures, sports and random mountain stories : Follow DolomiteSport

In addition to running PatitucciPhoto, we also manage DolomiteSport.com, a site we describe as Inspired Mountain Living; stories, photos, trip reports, etc… We are each super motivated, dedicating all of our time to managing our businesses, being fulltime athletes focusing on bike racing, ultra running, ski randonee racing and even saving a little extra time for gardening and studying Italian.

Dan is originally from California while Janine comes from Luzern, Switzerland. She arrived to California in 1996 in an effort to escape the Swiss rain. They met in 1999 while at Santa Barbara’s Brooks Institute of Photography. A Guru in India felt it best that she move back to Europe, thankfully for Dan she listened.

Blog Objectives

1. To have fun

2. To record random experiences

3. To include our friends

4. To demonstrate our passion for living, mountain sports and photography

Blog Disclaimer

We are Professional Photographers, not Professional Bloggers.
For clients visiting the site, please don’t critique… photos may be made with mobile phones, over beers with friends and with no desire to appear high in quality. Again, please see number 1 in Objectives.
So, read on, look at the pictures, visit the links and get to know us a little better.