About
I’ve been making pictures with a camera since a second grade field trip to the La Brea Tar Pits. My parents loaned me their Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera with a full roll of black & white film. It only held 12 exposures, but 12 was enough to make a lasting impression. Unable to draw even a crooked line, I was able to create images showing my point of view. Of course, the creating process had to wait for a few years due to financial constraints, but the possibility of a career making pictures – as fantastic a dream as it was – was always there.
Since receiving my photojournalism degree from the University of Missouri, I’ve been working as both photographer and picture editor at four newspapers in the Midwest. Even though news, portraiture, and sports are essential aspects of my day-to-day gig, visual storytelling is what gives me the most satisfaction since it allows me to go deeper into peoples’ lives and hopefully show their truer selves.
The best compliment I ever received was from a third grade girl while showing my pictures at a local elementary school. She asked why I wasn’t in any of the pictures. The girl explained she understood I was behind the camera, but why wasn’t my presence in the pictures? I wanted to go hug that kid, but I instead thanked her for the compliment and told her our greatest hope is to be invisible while we work. It’s a funny concept. Us thinking we could actually be invisible as we’re often contorting our bodies into odd positions with our mechanical shutters clunking. But every now and again it happens… the planets align and we’re successful for that moment. And then we try to do it again.
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