Rainier began his professional career as a photographic assistant to famed landscape photographer Ansel Adams. Today, Rainier's photographs and books are widely exhibited and published around the world. He has received numerous awards for his photography, including five ""Picture of the Year"" awards for his continued documentation of vanishing tribes. Rainier states that his life's mission is to ""help empower indigenous peoples - helping them to use photography and technology to enhance their culture and lives."" He has spent the last two decades documenting tattoo cultures in every corner of the world. The photographic odyssey has taken him from the Yakuza in Japan to the hill tribes of New Guinea to the street gangs of Los Angeles. When he's not traveling the world with camera in tow, he spends his time at home in New York, and among the mountains and streams in Colorado.