I've carried a camera my entire life.

Capturing what goes on around me was an instinct born of and developed within a journalism family. Because of Dad's assignments for TIME I was born in London, my brother in Paris, and we lived in Argentina while Dad covered the coup in Chilé; an adventure we nearly didn't escape. The correspondent influence began before I could even walk. Add an innate wanderlust, and to this day, "when are you going?" is the parental response to any mention of a place not yet visited.

But while my father leads with writing, I present the image first. When the whole Eisendrath family went down in a small plane in Costa Rica, I grabbed my camera as soon as the doctors looked the other way and hobbled back to the wreckage, broken bones be damned. Once we made it home to American hospitals, Dad wrote of near-death for The New York Times while I shared my images.

It could be down the street on a Tuesday night or 3,000 miles away. There's just always so much unexpected to discover.

Washington DC is my home when I'm home.

Ben Eisendrath