Jim Karageorge began photographing as an undergraduate at Yale, working on the campus newspaper and photo editing a literary publication. On the way to a BA in Philosophy, he studied sculpture, art history and photojournalism. Jim took a year off from academics and did promotional photography for Misterogers Neighborhood in his hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. Storytelling with images continued to be a burning interest and that led to his enrollment in the MA program in Communication/Film at Stanford. After completing the coursework and several documentary films, he opened Karageorge Studio in 1977. Production work in film significantly influences Jim's technical approach and vision in photography. His use of lighting as a transformational tool is both a style and an attitude that he brings to photography from film. It has led to the development of a lighting seminar called Making Something out of Nothing, which Jim teaches as part of the Photo East/West Seminars for Photo District News. He has been a guest lecturer at UC Berkeley and the Academy of Art College and has won awards in the Mead Show, the AR 100, the AIGA Show, the San Francisco Show, Communication Arts and Print Magazine.