Biography

Daniel (Dan) Baradon grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, majoring in Biology with a concentration in Field Biology. His passion for wildlife photography goes back to his undergraduate thesis, The Life History of the Yellow-billed Magpie at Rancho El Chorro, San Luis Obispo County, California, where he observed, annotated, and photographed the behavior, interaction and socialization of the Yellow-billed Magpie (Pica nuttalli) in a natural setting over a 2-year period. The Yellow-billed Magpie is only found in the central coast of California and nowhere else in the world. Also during this time, he pursued many artistic endeavors that ranged from Art, Landscape and Wildlife Photography, Stained Glass to lost-wax cast sculpture and jewelry. Upon graduation in 1978, he attended a year of graduate school in Soil Science and joined the United States Air Force in 1979. He served for over 24 years and retired in 2004. His assignments took him overseas to Germany and Denmark where he studied Stained Glass, Marquetry with two German Meisters (Masters in their subject areas), framing and matting, and took in a lot of classical and historical artwork throughout Europe (Italy, Germany, Greece, Denmark, France and Belgium).