Each month Transitions profiles an individual who has made significant changes in his or her work life and highlights the techniques used to make the changes.

Carlton SooHoo, 43

Career transition: From biotechnology research scientist to photographer and entrepreneur

What he used to do: Sales and marketing, Polymer Labs

What he does now: Managing partner, Panospin Studios

Making the switch: ''My object in living is to unite my avocation and my vocation," states one of Robert Frost's characters. It took him a couple of decades and a circuitous career path, but Carlton SooHoo has finally managed to do just that.

Born in Hong Kong, SooHoo and his family moved to the Boston area when he was just a year old to seek ''better opportunities." Growing up he worked in the family's restaurant business, but his family always encouraged him to look beyond for something more.

''My father said the business was very hard," said SooHoo, ''but I didn't really know what he meant when I was young."

SooHoo knew he wanted to help people but did not have a clear vision of his future. Following the call of ''what my parents wanted me to do," SooHoo enrolled at Tufts University as a pre-med student after graduating Brookline High School in 1980.

''I grew up in an Asian culture of filial piety," said SooHoo, an only child. ''They wanted a medical doctor for a son and I wanted to please my parents."

Double-majoring in chemistry and biology, SooHoo realized he did not have the grades for medical school. He also remembered from pre-med courses that he was not interested in being around ''death, dying, and disease."

He was, however, interested in cancer research. So he created a path for himself that would combine his interest in helping people with science and medicine. He graduated from Tufts in 1984 and earned his PhD in biochemistry from Brandeis in 1990.

From there SooHoo went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a post-doctoral fellowship, researching cancer in the Department of Chemistry. By 1993 he was hired by Repligen as a pharmaceutical formulation specialist, but over the next two years moved to two other companies, IntraCell and American Biogenetic Sciences.

During this period SooHoo also met and married his wife. They had a son in 1994.

But just around this time, SooHoo also stepped back to look at where his career was going. He had been with three biotech companies in three years and was not satisfied in his work. He signed up to attend a four-day retreat for a program called Life Design, which probed deeply into each participant's values, dreams, goals, and hopes for the future.

''I realized I needed much more contact with people, and that laboratory research and testing was not doing it for me," said SooHoo.

Giving life sciences one more try, SooHoo joined Polymer Labs in 1997 -- in a sales and marketing position that gave him more contact with people.

For the next three years he traveled heavily. At first SooHoo thought it was great and loved the freedom of being on the road. But eventually it took a toll on him and his young family. In 2000, after more than a decade, SooHoo decided to leave biotech for good. Knowing he wanted to help people, and feeling the pull of his pivotal experience at Life Design years earlier, SooHoo enrolled in Coach University and for the next five years served as a life coach to those similar to him, trying to figure out what to do with their lives.

He led classes, seminars, and workshops and dealt with numerous clients. After five years, the pendulum having swung from isolated lab scientist to a job with extensive personal contact, SooHoo said he was ''burnt out."

Turning his life coach lens inward, he finally asked himself the same core questions he had been asking his clients: What are your passions? What fuels your dreams? What do you want to do with your life?

Taking a course at the Nikon Traveling School for photographers, SooHoo realized his true interest was his long-held love of photography, a love nurtured from childhood by his father, whom SooHoo worked with in a darkroom at home. SooHoo discovered not just digital photography but panoramic portraits, a technique that stitches together several images to create a 360-degree view.

At the New England School of Photography, he connected with Jeffrey Engel, and in January 2005, the pair founded Panospin Studios, a virtual or web-based company that creates 360-degree panoramic portraits of landscapes, office and rental properties, and other spaces and objects.

Panospin is doing well. The firm is also developing a longer-term project, an educational DVD that displays panoramic views of Revolutionary War battle sites.

While he has not come near to equaling his compensation in biotech, SooHoo said he will make enough money in Panospin in the next few months to surpass the income he earned as a life coach. SooHoo also said his wife supports his venture, and that her steadier income as a software engineer at Raytheon makes her the breadwinner in the family.

''I'm really happy now and life is great," said SooHoo, adding that he ''could not go back to cubicle land."

While his mother died three years ago, SooHoo's father supports his son's career changes.

''And now I teach him about the digital darkroom," SooHoo said. ''It's the circle of life."