My Story. The short of it.

I understand photography as both a science, and an art. It is both technical and aesthetic. It requires a mastery of technique, a natural eye and a personal style. It can be learned or self-taught, trained and/or a natural. Photography requires persistence and spontaneity, planning and flexibility, discipline and creativity and yes, even a bit of luck.

I have a love of learning, a jones for history, a need to be outdoors and a longing to travel.

Photography is the perfect vehicle that brings them all together for me.

As cliché as it sounds, photography has always been a part of my life. Gazing with amazement at photos in my parent’s National Geographic collection, to my first camera gifted by my dad when I was 12-years-old. From high school photo classes, to college lighting courses and 20 plus years of experience as a professional wedding and event photographer, photography has always been the thread that ties them all together.

My story. The long version.

Photography and travel have always been a part of my life is travel. My father was military, so we traveled quite a bit growing up. From the Alaska Highway, (twice before it was paved) to annual family road trips, travel has always been there. As a six-year-old, I grew up playing in the woods of Alaska, just outside our back door in the small town of Eagle River. I remember observing brown bears along the side of the road from the back seat of my father’s Chevy Suburban as we explored Alaskan backroads. Moose would regularly wander through and eagles would soar overhead in our backyard. As a young teenager, we lived on a farm in Missouri where we were surrounded by fruit and walnut trees, thick woods and lazy creeks full of crawfish and bluegill. My father’s assignment to Thailand (just after the war) and the photos and stories he would send home only served to fuel my desire to travel abroad. As a history buff, being able to travel and see the places that I read about in books was an amazing experience. And finally, a love of learning and exploring makes photography a perfect discipline in which to explore the world, expand my knowledge and fuel my traveling jones.

While studying commercial photography in college, we (fellow students) always swore we would never be wedding photographers. In the days of film and medium format cameras, you shot from a strict shot list, conserved every frame, and had to be meticulous and regimented to insure you got all the shots. There was not a lot of room for creativity. In fact, most brides neither wanted creativity nor expected it. With the advent of digital, all that changed, and wedding photography blossomed into a creative, fun & fast paced fashion shoot and I jumped in and embraced it. For a few short years, a good, skilled, creative photographer could charge any price and brides would pay it. But with shortened learning curve brought on by digital, it wasn’t long before the competition caught up to us and supply and demand kicked in as prices dropped and bridal expectations become increasingly demanding.

Located in Las Vegas, I moved into event photography. I had shot occasional events as they popped up, but I quickly found that truly skilled, creative and professional event photographers where in short supply and targeted and provided my skills to large multi-day conferences, trades show and event production companies. It proved to be a very lucrative decision. I met and worked with thousands of companies, celebrities, CEO’s and some truly interesting and fun people. Now I would like to take a run at art and travel.

This website will document this new journey of exploration. To be honest, it has been a bit more challenging than I expected. I have a natural eye for composition and apparently there is a “style” to my work, though I am not sure if I could define it.  Unlike studio-based photographers who create and build photos, I like to search, wander and “find” photos. I mean know disrespect to those afore mentioned. It’s all challenging work. But “Chasing the light is a term I used with my wedding and engagement clients when I would describe how a typical shoot might go. Of course, I would have specific locations and small scenes scouted out ahead of time, but we always left time for chasing light. Shots where we would watch and look for opportunities of light almost always ended up being the most original, unique and artistic. Honestly, chasing the light kept the job of being a wedding and event photographer fun and creative, allowed me to fuel my artistic fire, and separated my work from many in a very competitive field.

Landscapes– Capturing long rows of winter trees lining empty fields of farmland. To this day, winter inspires me to want to shoot, activating some inner muse that stimulates my creative jones. But I also see natural beauty in grand vistas and small details. Landscape photography embodies my ‘chase the light” mentality and despite hours and days of patient disappointment and miles of endless walking, scoring that big scenic, capturing a one of a kind grand sunset, that is what the chase is all about.

Cityscapes– Man-made structures have always attracted me photographically. In fact, my first award was an image of a grain silo entered into a scholastic art competition. I am drawn by the colors and textures, parallels and angles, the juxtaposition of old and new, glass and concrete, and the harmony of nature and man. We are after all a product of the natural world. A fact we forget sometimes.

Seascapes- Seascapes are a new love of mine. Just something about the sounds of the waves, smells and variety of light that transforms the world as it passed before my lens.  Admittingly, I also just like to be near the water in the morning. It’s peaceful, calm other Zen shit like that. On mornings where the light isn’t particularly great, I just get to enjoy the walk. Of course, a part of me feels unproductive, however at the end of the day, I have positive thoughts about being there.

Travel & Art- New journey allowing my eye and my vision to lead me to create images for myself and hopefully images that others will find invokes an emotion, feeling or memory that they can experience as they view my images for the first time.

San Diego- San Diego is a magical mixture of Landscapes, Seascapes and Cityscapes and I return again and again to the same locations always finding something different.

So, this is my Journey…. (wow, another cliché)