Justin is a photographer, author, and teacher who has spent an unreasonable portion of his life arguing that the camera is the least interesting part of photography. People keep buying him cameras anyway.

He also keeps a day job — though he's not at liberty to discuss it. Secret squirrel sort of thing. What he'll happily tell you is that every spare hour goes to the same place it always has: somewhere out in Iowa with a camera and a thermos of very good coffee.

He grew up in western Iowa, near the Loess Hills, and spent his summers on his grandparents' farm wandering around looking at things — which, it turns out, is just photography without the camera. The actual camera came later, in a class he took mostly because it looked like an easy A. The A was easy. Quitting the habit was not. It became the whole thing.

That habit turned into a career. Justin has made photographs for Iowa newspapers and for Our Iowa magazine — and he maintains, to anyone who'll listen, that there's no better magazine to shoot for. He covered the historic 2008 flood in Cedar Rapids, and over the years he's photographed more than a few of Iowa's favorite political figures, learning along the way that even the famous ones blink at the wrong moment.

He'll drive three hours of gravel and dirt back road to chase a single good photograph. He loves the national parks like everyone else — but he'll say it plainly: nothing beats the Iowa landscape. People drive through this state. Justin has spent a lifetime learning to stop.

Somewhere in there he wrote three books, including The Art of Seeing, and still gets a kick out of the fact that people read them. He instructs for Paul's Photo and the Creative Photography Academy in Torrance, California.

He built Framework because he kept meeting photographers with great gear and no idea what to do with it — and because he believes the good stuff (the seeing, the intention, the part that makes a photograph yours) can actually be taught. He's still learning it himself. He still gets it wrong. He still thinks it's the best thing going.

Photography is more than a photograph. Spend a little time with Justin and you'll see what he means.