In his photographs, he examines themes of ecology, environmentalism and perceptions of landscape, while striving to strike a balance between art history and natural history. Born in 1981 and raised in Ohio, Todd went on to receive a bachelor's degree in biology and visual art from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 2003. In 2011, he earned a master's degree in photography from J.E. Purkyne University in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. He also studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, was a 2006 artist-in-residence at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology and was a 2008 Fulbright Fellow in Mongolia.