For sixteen years, Lo Scalzo served as a photojournalist for U.S. News and World Report. He covered assignments in more than 60 countries, winning countless awards and accolades from his peers. He just couldn't stop moving. "I'm something of a travel addict," he admits in his memoir Evidence of My Existence, and photography was his way to satisfy that addiction. But his addiction came with a price. His frequent and compulsive travels abroad left his wife a stranger to him. While he was in Baghdad covering the U.S. invasion of Iraq, she was heading to the hospital with her second miscarriage. Lo Scalzo hated himself for what he felt was desertion, so even when he was given the opportunity in 2004 to cover John Kerry's presidential campaign—quite an honor—he declined. He writes in his memoir:

[T]his time, for the first time, it was so easy to back out—not a guilty concession but what I truly wanted …. [H]ow silly this effort. This stress. Seventeen years of it. Not time wasted but time overplayed, trying to inflate a finite ability through sheer force of will.

He later adds toward the end of his memoir what ultimately led to his stepping away from his frantic pace:

How to stop moving? It was about accepting a simple truth: In the world of photojournalism I would always be a man of minor accomplishments. But in the field of fatherhood—to one little boy, at least—I had a chance to become legend.