Documentary photographer Doug Menuez was granted three years of unprecedented access to Steve Jobs and his team as he built a new company from the ground up after being forced to leave Apple in 1985.

After photographing the famine and conflict in Eithiopia, Menuez had returned to San Francisco searching for a more hopeful story for the human race.

He found it in his own backyard and between 1985 and 2000, Menuez recorded the struggles and successes of the creative minds working in the Valley, who were determined to change every aspect of our lives through technology.

Because the notoriously private Jobs had allowed Menuez complete access, it meant 70 other leading companies also let him in, including Bill Gates at Microsoft, John Warnock at Adobe, John Sculley at Apple, IBM, Hewlett Packard and more.

He captured Jobs as his team worked on building the NeXT computer – which he told Menuez he wanted to be revolutionary to the extent that it would allow ‘some kid at Stanford to cure cancer in his dorm room’.

The photographer captured the Apple founder’s passionate speeches – as well as rare moments he is seen relaxing – as well as the tireless efforts of workers in boardrooms, labs and at home.

Menuez told Daily Mail Online that the experience was 'the most incredible shoot of my 30 year+ career'.

He added: 'Not even standing on the North Pole, crossing the Sahara or exploring the Amazon compares to the explosion of innovation I was privileged to witness.' 

Describing Jobs, Menuez said: 'Steve was the most inspiring person I ever met, and I've met a few - Bill Clinton, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, among others. 

'There's a cliche that persists that he was either a genius or quite difficult. He had rich, complex gray areas in between that mattered a lot. 

'Not excusing his tougher side, but building new technology is ridiculously breathtakingly hard. Unless you spend time watching the process it's really hard to even express how hard it is. 

'Steve and his team were willing to sacrifice everything to accomplish the mission. You were either on the bus to the future or off.'

Reeling off his personal highlights, he added: 'There were so many - but I'm not sure they will seem amazing to non-geeks.

'Watching two Apple engineers parachute out of a plane during a forbidden escape from relentless deadlines.watching painter David Hockney learn Photoshop in 1990, Jeff Bezos cheerfully giving his pre-funding pitch for Amazon to my wife and I while riding a gondola up Aspen Mountain, arguing about the future of digital photography with Bill Gates.

'Steve telling me he wanted some kid at Stanford to cure cancer in his dorm room using his NeXT computer, Sun co-founder Bill Joy explaining this new thing I had to check out called the internet, or World Wide Web, around 1992 (which by the way was invented by Brit Tim Berners-Lee using Steve's NeXt computer around 1990...'

(dailymail.co.uk)