Five years ago, Dawn Jones-Garcia was studying human cells through a microscope. These days, she’s also looking at human forms through a piece of glass, but in a very different way. Using strong, graphic compositions and bright color, Jones-Garcia has photographed a wide range of humanity, from long-haired rock stars to Peruvian loggers. The story of how she went from biologist to photographer is as intriguing as many of her images.

“I was unhappy: it was pretty clear to me that science wasn’t what I wanted to do,” Jones-Garcia says of her pre-photography life. On paper, it all looked great: she had a loving husband, a nice house and was studying for a master’s degree in Biology. But something was nagging at her, pushing her to make a change. So she cashed in a financial aid check and bought her first digital SLR camera.

After a few months, Jones-Garcia felt confident enough to show her work to Dennis Darling, head of the photojournalism concentration at the University of Texas, Austin, where she was studying. “Dennis encouraged me to take his introductory class,” she says. “I really loved it, so I kept taking one class a semester.” In the meantime, she graduated with her Master’s degree in Biology and got a job at the university doing science education outreach.

Two years later, frightened but excited, Jones-Garcia and her husband sold their house and moved into a tiny apartment so that she could study photojournalism full-time. “Everyone thought we were crazy,” she remembers. “Society programs us to want an education, a job, a home, and once you have those things you’re not supposed to go backwards. But I had to do it. It was about the pursuit of happiness.”

In this case, happiness came with a side order of luck. The semester Jones-Garcia found her way to Darling’s office, there was another newcomer in the photojournalism department: Eli Reed, the distinguished Magnum shooter and Olympus Visionary. New to teaching, Reed “had a drive to made a difference, and saw this as his time to give back,” Jones-Garcia said. “I was desperate for a mentor, and he was willing to fill that role.”

Reed and Jones-Garcia began to meet regularly, discussing his projects and her development. Soon, she was tagging along at his shoots, observing how he worked. “Eli has such a genuine nature that everyone is drawn to him and shows their true self,” Jones-Garcia says. “For him, it’s about more than just making an image. It’s about being present in the moment.”

Under Reed’s mentorship, Jones-Garcia began to change her work, taking more risks. Jettisoning her “pretty pictures” of buildings and landscapes, she started to turn her lens on people. “When you have a static subject like a building, you’re not going to get those decisive moments,” she says. “Landscapes and buildings are beautiful, but people are just so fascinating, and they do the darnedest things. To me, they became the most interesting of animals.”

With time and effort, her focus on the human animal began to pay off. Last year, Jones-Garcia was one of three student winners of the Olympus Photographers of Tomorrow contest, for her image “Airborne.” The image, which shows a young cyclist doing an aerial stunt, was “tight and full of action, with no wasted space,” said contest judge Jay Kinghorn. Jones-Garcia remembers coming upon the cyclist and his friends on the UT Austin campus one afternoon, being glad she’d followed Reed’s advice to have her camera on her at all times. “I wasn’t thinking about the contest at the time, I just thought it would make a great image,” she says.

Like Reed, Jones-Garcia uses Olympus E-series cameras, which she praises for their ruggedness and color quality. "With other cameras, color can look washed-out, not vibrant, and you have to pump it up in Photoshop," she says. "With Olympus, the color is rich and true to life."

Her relationship with Reed has also developed and deepened. Last fall, she accompanied her mentor to Peru, where he was shooting a documentary film about ecological logging. Reed needed an assistant to shoot stills, and picking Jones-Garcia showed his enormous trust in her. “I’d worked with Eli as a still photography assistant before, but this was the first time that he was shooting footage and I was shooting stills,” she says. “My job was to support him and make sure he was getting all the still imagery he needed.”

Initially skeptical about the concept of ecological logging (“Being a tree-hugger, my attitude was, why cut down a tree at all?” Jones-Garcia says), she changed her mind on meeting Jim King, a Canadian whose Iquitos-based company, Exotic Wood World, is practicing sustainable logging. “Rather than clear-cutting forests, they hire a family to go in with a chainsaw and cut down a tree, then carry it out on foot,” Jones-Garcia says. “By cutting down a tree in that way, they can save a thousand others.”

"Dawn did a really good job in Peru," says Reed. "It's hard to shoot stills and footage at the same time. There are people who make really good pictures, and people who just take flashy pictures that you can’t remember five minutes after seeing them. Dawn is in the first group."

While in Peru, Jones-Garcia got a chance to photograph other subjects too. With a quiet scrutiny that recalls Reed’s work, she turned her lens on fruit sellers, motorbike taxi drivers and children playing on a hillside. “My interest is to meet people, learn about their culture and find out what makes them who they are,” she says. Her work in Peru shows an able talent for the task.

All in all, it's been an exciting ride for this former science geek. Five years ago, she didn’t know what an f-stop was. Now, on the verge of graduating with her second Masters degree, Jones-Garcia is looking forward to a bright future in photography. “I took a great leap into the unknown,” she says with a laugh. “It was scary. But you know, I think I made the right decision.”