By Jacqueline Tobin

Ask Corey Arnold to pick the one place in the world he feels most comfortable and he's likely to respond, "The Bering Sea." Arnold, who spent six years on those icy, treacherous waters working on a commercial crab boat, says fishing and photography have been intertwined since he was five. His father owned a boat, Arnold explains, "and we'd go on it all the time. He was really into photography and was always taking pictures. When I was 12 he got me a Pentax K1000." When he enrolled at the Academy of Art in San Francisco after two years at Northern Arizona University, he began commercial fishing in the summers to help pay the bills. It quickly became much more than just a summer job.

Arnold says he owes his success as a photographer over the last three years to "the blogosphere." After crab fishing for two years, during which time he shot photos of his fellow fisherman, he built his Web site in 2005, "and started to post the images on the site, along with my other personal work." Next, he sent a link to fecalface.com, the popular art blog, which interviewed him about crab fishing and his adventures on whaling boats in Norway. "After that, my traffic and links grew exponentially. Suddenly I was getting phone calls and inquiries from magazines and galleries around the world, many of whom found me on fecalface." In 2006, Arnold got another break when the Discovery Channel came to Portland to film its popular series "Deadliest Catch."

Now Arnold is repped by Maren Levinson at Redeye Represents, has shot commercial and editorial assignments, licensed stock images, and gets calls from galleries. He still plans, however, to stay close to fishing. "I'm transitioning now into being a salmon fisherman in the summer and a photographer the rest of the year."

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