ABOUT ME
Photography has been my anchor through the best and worst of times—a creative outlet, a way to connect with my community, and honestly, a form of therapy. I hope it becomes just as meaningful for you.
My Key Photography Moments
The Famous Oatmeal Camera
My deep dive into photography began with a pinhole camera I built for my sixth-grade science fair. I used a cardboard Quaker Oats cylinder as the body of the camera. The images on the photo paper vanished before I could present them, and my teacher gave me a terrible grade. That project sparked a lifelong fascination with the intersection of art, science, and technology. Worth it.
Film, Darkroom, and Prints
In high school, I immersed myself in film and darkroom work, determined to keep those fleeting pinhole images from slipping away again. I can still smell the fixer. Armed with a much better camera and set up—a Canon Elan 7N, a 50mm lens, and Ilford Delta film—photography soon eclipsed my love for painting. This was also when I made my first monetary gain from art—selling photographic prints.
Dawn of Digital
During undergrad, I stacked credits in visual art, coding, and branding—my BFA looked more like “creative independent studies". I’d go from a screenprinting class to a storytelling workshop to writing HTML and AppleScript. I fully embraced the digital shift once it surpassed analog quality: shooting with a Canon 5D, digitizing archives for the university, and teaching private Adobe lessons.
Photography for Marketing
I took on marketing content gigs across the country, often blending coordination, content creation, and campaign strategy. Honestly, all those nerdy grad classes in color management and the psychology of art came in handy—I advised corporate marketing teams on how to keep things on brand, visually consistent, and emotionally effective. In between gigs I taught photography courses at a university. Travel gave me the chance to build personal photo series around the world with my Canon 5D Mark III, which had significantly better low-light capabilities. I also upgraded my 100M fixed lens when they added z-axis focusing - very crisp, very drool-worthy.
The Cloud Shift
As my client base shifted into the tech world, so did I—eventually stepping into a product marketing role. I also switched from teaching photography to adults to teaching teens at a local nonprofit. Even while advising clients and students on cloud transitions, I lagged behind with my own. I stuck with Lightroom Classic long after Creative Cloud launched, and when I finally switched to Lightroom CC, I still kept files on external hard drives instead of in the cloud. This confession reminds me how exhausting constant change can be—and how tempting it is to stick with the old way. These days, I trust cloud storage over hardware; eventually, the quality shift becomes impossible to ignore.
AI in Photography
During the pandemic, I worked remotely for a global enterprise, which turned me into an online conferencing pro. I used that unexpected skill to teach photography virtually—bringing connection and creativity when we all needed it most. AI is generating images as fast as the shutter clicks, and I use it to create images to paint from—but I haven’t yet figured out how to incorporate it into my photography practice. Given the pace of AI, people are asking: is photography dead? Society has been here before. When photography first hit the scene in the mid-1800s, people worried that painting would be a thing of the past—and yet, painting still dominates the gallery walls. Photography is evolving. I’ve always adopted new tools when the quality and process truly improve: low-light performance, crisper focusing, or more practical storage. But for me, photography is still rooted in the practice of hunting and finding, then memory and sensory recall—not just aesthetics. I don't see AI providing us with a replacement just yet. Who knows—in a few years, I might be wearing slick camera glasses and using AI-driven presets to sort through images and edit. But AI is not there yet. And neither am I.