He has an MA and PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Stony Brook in Stony Brook, NY. He was a resident scholar at Cambridge University and the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He did two years of anthropological fieldwork in Kenya among the Tugen people where he photographed their lives intensively. Ott’s photography education includes courses at the University of Minnesota, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and BOCES on Long Island, NY. He has taught photography at Century College, White Bear Lake, MN, and at Minnetonka Center for the Arts. He is the owner of Argus Images and has shot numerous commercial assignments over the past twenty years.