In 1929, he became interested in photography, from the mid-1930s he became a staff photographer for The Boston Globe newspaper, then for Life and Time magazines.

At the same time, the first color photo portrait of the then extremely popular baseball player Ted Williams from the Boston Red Sox club appeared in Life.

[1][3] In 1962, Griffin's first color photo album of New England landscapes was released.

In 1994, one of Griffin's biographers wrote: It's a rare house not to find Griffin's photograph in a telephone directory, calendar, annual report, magazine, or book.

[4] In 1992, a museum of photography[5] created by Griffin at his own expense was opened in Boston, to whose funds he donated his 75,000 photographs,[6] and in 2001, after his death, the Griffin Foundation, which provides grants and scholarships for photographers.