In 1958, Howard Bingham, hoping to turn a hobby into a trade, took a beginner's course in photography at a local community college. It was not a felicitous pairning. His instructor, after handing Bingham an "F", advised him to try something else. Photography, he was told, would not be a prudent field to choose as his life's work. But Bingham's inner voice told him otherwise, and because he followed his internal gyroscope, Howard Bingham has spent the better part of the last three decades photographing many of America's historical turning points, as well as one of the world's best known and most beloved figures, Muhammad Ali.

Born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1939, Howard emigrated to Los Angeles with his parents at age four. He was educated in the city's public schools, and attended Compton College. After receiving that eye-opening "F" in photography, Bingham was determined to hone his craft, so he apprenticed at the  Los Angeles Sentinel, one of the country's largest black newspapers. After a month, he was hired. That job lasted for about 18 months, when he was fired -- for trying to augment his $75.00 weekly salary by moonlighting as a wedding photographer. It was while working at the Sentinel in 1962 that Bingham was assigned to cover Ali, then a brash young boxer from Louisville, who still answered to his birth name, Cassius Marcellus Clay. Ali was in town to promote an upcoming match to a boxer long since forgotten. Bingham showed up, photographed the event and left. But he ran into Clay a few hours later (he was with his brother, who had an equally ambitious name: Rudolph Valentino Clay...) watching the passing show on a Los Angeles street. Amused, Bingham offered to show the young Clays the town. That impromptu generosity became the first step in a life long friendship.

Since then, Howard Bingham has toured the globe with Ali, chronicling the athlete-statesman's every major championship win and loss, personal appearances and ad hoc diplomatic trips,

including a humanitarian visit to Bangladesh, and many visits to the African continent. And although most people assumed he was on Ali's payroll, Bingham photographed Ali simply because he wanted to. "Ali and I are friends. I did not, and do not, make a living from him." Bingham insists. As Ali's recognition expanded, so did Bingham's photographic skills and his reputation for them.

During the turbulent 60's, he recorded the devastation of virtually every urban uprising of significance. "Whereever there was a riot, I was there. I covered them all." As a contract photographer for LIFE MAGAZINE in 1968 he journeyed to Chicago to cover the chaos of the democratic convention. A 1969 LIFE photo-essay on Mound Bayou,  Mississippi, done with writer Dick Hall, has been likened to James Agee's and Walker Evans celebrated collaboration, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." He's photographed celebrities as disparate as Adam Clayton Powell, Jr, Malcom X, to President Gerald Ford. His work has also appeared in TIME, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, LOOK, PEOPLE, NEWSWEEK and EBONY, among other international publications as well. While in Ali's orbit, Bingham came into contact with rising comedian Bill Cosby. Their rapport was good enough that when Cosby nabbed his stereotype-smashing TV role in the Bill Cosby Show, he asked Bingham to work as a still photographer, that eventually led to work as one of the pioneer African American still photographers in the movie industry -- three of them with box office titan Robert Redford. In addition to his paid work Bingham also devoted several unpaid hours to mentoring young African Americans who also wanted to be in the movie industry.

Today Bingham divides his time between commercial assignments and documentary work. In addition to his ongoing work on Ali, Bingham's photos recently appeared in Songs of My People, a traveling exhibition and book co-sponsored by TIME WARNER and THE SMITHSONIAN. His own book Muhammad Ali: A Thirty-Year Journey has been published by Simon and Schuster. Not bad for a kid who was told he'd never amount to anything in his chosen field.