My inherent need to story tell, to share my excitements and passions, to express my vision of the luster in life...needed medium. It started with skateboarding and the excitement of landing new tricks. I felt an inexplicable need to share my progression and that of my friends with more than just the neighborhood, so I bought a video camera and started filming. This practice grew into me filming an
ything and everything. It needed only to be mildly entertaining. My love for art and making things drove me down an academic path that ended at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, learning the ins and outs of architectural design. It was here, during my freshman year that my parents bought me my first digital camera. It was nothing fancy, a pocket sized Nikon Coolpix, but given my natural born need to explore, I went nuts with it. Growing up, I had never really seen my video recording as an art form...but now, with still images flashing on the LCD in front of me, I began to analyze. What makes a good picture? I began to draw connections with the concepts I was learning in my architecture classes...what makes a good building? Composition, light, consideration of the experience...of the viewer. Lightbulbs started going off and I became engrossed. I continued taking pictures and learning, carrying my little camera everywhere I went. It traveled with me on trips to Washington, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Mexico, Iowa, and to the US Virgin Islands. All the while I was snapping, recording, trying not just to show the world...but to show it the way I was seeing it. I found an old Pentax film camera at a local Goodwill and carried it with me to Europe. There I eased my shutter finger, becoming even more considerate of my pictures. In early 2011 I broke down and purchased my first DSLR, a Canon T2i. It was then that a good friend of mine and fellow photo enthusiast, Roman Kuzmich, approached me with a novel idea. "We should start a photography business!" It was something I had not given much thought to, but I was a broke college student and figured I could use the money. So Roman and I started putting the word out and picking up work. This little business venture of ours came at an uncertain time for me, and the start of it put me into a reflective period. In my architectural studies, it seemed that all of my peers were gaining direction, where I felt that I was losing my own. With graduation nearing I found myself losing motivation in the pursuit of becoming an architect. In the building designs of our first and second year, the only limitations were our imaginations, a basic understanding of gravity, and our professors' carful direction toward 'good design'...but as studio courses passed, that little utopia began to be chiseled away by the real world. I began to see that budget cuts, structural limitations, and building codes would be fighting to degrade the purity of my ideas. I had no doubt that a good architect could massage a project through the gauntlet to still reach a beautiful building, but for me, that was still a decade away at best. I became discouraged, and photography brought back excitement. Making money with my camera slowly brought me to the point of admitting that I no longer desired to be an architect. I discovered through shooting for interior designers, and construction companies that the real joy i found in architecture could be taken from photographing it...not just designing it. Also, I quickly realized the satisfaction of knowing that my work would remain what I made it. I set up the shot, I snap the shutter, I edit the image, and I deliver. From start to finish, the work is my own and the limitations are only what I can do. Integrity is always there and I can be proud of my good work. In the time that I have been shooting, I have reached a pretty diverse experience. I have shot everything from architecture and interiors, to portraits, weddings, surprise engagements, yearbook photos, sports events, models, concerts, landscapes, wildlife, and even a product shoot that ended up in Thrasher magazine. I am shooting full time now. I love what I do and I plan to continue doing it for the rest of my life. Outside of the work I do under my own name, I also regularly shoot for St. John Photography in Pineville, and Image Magic Photography in Charlotte.
