Growing up in a military family, my childhood was punctuated with frequent moves. Despite this, my formative years were spent predominantly in the Midwest. I was exposed to photography early, and my early forays into the medium centered around a toy box camera and dioramas I created out of little green plastic army men, cardboard buildings, and models that I had built. In high school, I bought my first ”real” camera and carried it everywhere, learning the basics by trial and error and exploring landscape photography, portraiture, and travel photography. For a time, I was sure that I would find a way to make a living with my camera.
Despite my best intentions, college, and a military career intervened. While I continued to pursue photography on and off, it was my passion for scuba diving that reignited a latent passion for photography. On a dive vacation, I rented an underwater camera on a lark. In retrospect, those first images were marginal at best, but they showed me that through photography I could communicate to my non-diving family and friends the beauty and diversity I found underwater. Eventually, I also realized that if I wanted to communicate more effectively through my photography, I would need formal academic training. To that end, I enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts program at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, CA in 2011.
Since retiring from the Air Force in 2012, my fine art work has focused primarily on landscape imagery grounded in the sublime tradition. My visual approach moves beyond traditional photographic expectations, reflecting my personal experience and relationship with both the natural and man-made landscapes. The conceptually-driven work encourages the audience to reflect upon their own emotional connections to the landscape, as well as our collective relationship with nature.