I wanted to be just like my dad because he always had his cool camera with him. I would go with my parents to see air shows, and they would always give me a disposable camera to take pictures while we were there. As I got older, I took to borrowing my dad’s camera to take pictures of the things I liked. My parents bought a digital camera while I was in high school, and I’m positive I got more use
out of it than they did. I had no real idea what I was doing back then, other than pointing a camera at something that I thought looked interesting and pressing the shutter and thinking what I had captured was pretty neat. At that point, I had never taken a picture of anything and gotten a result that wowed me, and I was disappointed by that. I wanted to learn how to take pictures like the ones I had seen when I looked through outdoors magazines, my dad’s aviation books, and my uncle’s car posters. When I graduated from high school, I went to Inver Hills Community College and took their Introduction to Digital Photography course. The course required the students to use a DSLR, and so I had the perfect to excuse go buy a brand new one of my own. There I learned some of the basic fundamentals of photography, and I realized how much more involved the photographic world was then I originally thought. I wanted to learn more, so I transferred to Dakota County Technical College and enrolled in the DCTC Photography program. In my time at DCTC, I’ve been able to open up my creative side and have created images that I never knew I would be able to. With my photography, I strive to capture uplifting beauty that many people may miss. With my subject focus surrounding natural landscapes and wildlife I do my best to showcase the great outdoors by creating images that capture the beauty of the natural world. In my portraiture, and in my wedding shooting, I capture candid moments of joy and excitement and outward expression, and in doing so I hope to portray the beauty of individuality and relationships for my subjects.