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Lapeer native, John Gerlach, does just that. A world-renowned nature photographer, Gerlach and his wife Barbara, kind of fell into their dream life.

"After I got my degree in Wildlife Ecology at Central (Michigan University), I decided I really didn't want to work for someone else. So I loaded all of my belongings into the back of my pick-up truck and started traveling the country," Gerlach began as he described how his career in photography evolved.

Gerlach began submitting photos and articles to photography publications while he traveled about the country.

"My first article was published in Popular Photography," said Gerlach, still humbly shocked by his beginners luck. "After that I gradually started getting more sales."

Teaching has always been a skill of Gerlach's, so in the late 70's he added photography seminars to his list of offerings. The classes filled up.

And then another opportunity flashed before him. While teaching a seminar in New York in the early eighties, Gerlach was approached by a representative from a travel company.

"He asked me if I would be interested taking photos of wildlife in Kenya," Gerlach explained. Nearly 25 years later, Gerlach has lead numerous photo tours through the wildest terrain Africa has to offer and has added other world-wide destination tours to his course schedule as well.

Despite his busy travel schedule, Gerlach has always been committed to holding on to his Michigan roots. Every year Gerlach hosts two photo tours in Michigan. One in late summer and one in the fall to capture the splendid color palette only Michigan forests can produce.

It was during one of these Michigan tours in the late eighties Gerlach met his wife and business partner, Barbara. Also a nature lover raised in rural Michigan, Barbara was working as a color printer for NASA when she signed up for John's week-long photo seminar. They have been together ever since.

Married and ready to settle down, the Gerlach's bought a home in Munising, Mich. When asked why he did not move back to Lapeer, where many of his family members still reside, Gerlach chuckles, "Lapeer got too big. I can't live in a place with more than one restaurant."

The two stayed in Munising until1993 when they took up residence in Idaho on the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park. Here they spend winters taking people on tours of the park via snowmobile or horseback.

John's mother, Donna Gerlach, still lives in Lapeer and is very proud of all her son has accomplished. "I show his book to everyone I meet," said Donna of John & Barbara's first photography publication, Digital Nature Photography the Art & Science, that came out in 2007 and rapidly sold out. "He's also working on another book about landscapes," Donna added.

While she has never joined her son on any of the African expeditions, Donna still remembers accompanying him on one of his adventures, "I went as far as Arizona where we stayed on a dude ranch and it was really fun."

Amongst all the busy-ness of tours and seminars, Gerlach also provides a regular column to Nature Photographer magazine where he is associate editor, works on future book possibilities, has created an instructional DVD on how to photograph Yellowstone and may even have his own television series in the works.

When asked if he could've ever expected any of his successes Gerlach says, "Growing up my only goal was to have a cabin in the U.P., so it is still hard to believe we go to Africa every year."

To obtain a copy of one of Gerlach's books, the instructional DVD or for a schedule of his up-coming seminars, visit www.gerlachnaturephoto.com. And sign up for a seminar while you're there. After teaching photography to more than 40,000 students over the years, he may aprreciate seeing some familiar faces from years passed staring back at him through a lense.