Evan Kafka grew up on the Maryland side of the DC Beltway, attending a technical school for electronics in the mid-1980s, then working for the Associated Press in Washington as an electronics technician. Trouble calls to the area’s major news outlets and institutions—TV and radio stations, newspapers, even the White House, Capitol, and deep inside the Pentagon—gave him a rare insider’s perspective, a taste of what it’s like to personally witness history. The job brought him face-to-face with many top news photographers, opening him to the idea of a career in the field. He quit his job, headed north, and studied photography at Rochester Institute of Technology. After graduating in 1995, he moved to Williamsburg and set up a darkroom. In no time, he was shooting editorial assignments for Metropolis, Entertainment Weekly, and ESPN. After many years of travel all over the country and world—for the likes of Fortune, The New York Times, New York magazine, Inc., and Barron’s and Forbes—his focus turned to advertising assignments, where his passions lie today. After 19 years in the city, he and his wife packed up the kids and headed south, to the mountains of Asheville, NC.