After joining the U.S. Army (3rd Armored Division), Lee began working as a photographer in 1965 for the Stars & Stripes (newspaper).
As Managing Editor George P. Hunt wrote in his editorial, this was Lee's first major assignment; "Rushing directly from an assignment on the stock market to the riot with only one workable lens, Bud shot the grim sequence of the death of a looter (pp.
"[2]His cover earned Lee Life magazine's 1967 photographer of the year award,[3] and the sequence drew a first tranche of readers letters from polarized views in the 18 Aug 1967 issue of Life,[4][5] and has since provoked controversy around poverty, civil rights, passive resistance and racial profiling.
After receiving a National Endowment for the Arts grant, he began the Artist Filmmaker in the Schools program in Tampa, FL.
Lee and his family and friends championed the causes of people in nursing homes and the issues and problems they face.