08/20/2026
There is a particular kind of wisdom in knowing when to begin something. There is another, possibly harder earned, in knowing when to hand it over.
Creativity has seasons. I have come to believe this more with every year I spend behind a camera. There are seasons when the ideas arrive faster than you can make them, seasons when the work asks you to stretch beyond what you thought you knew, and seasons when you recognize that something you love is ready for a new set of eyes.
After five years, I am handing over the reins of cover photography for Alexandria Living Magazine and Garden & Lake Living Magazine to Nikki Turnbow.
It feels significant to write that sentence.
For years, I have had the privilege of helping build those publications alongside publisher, Alaina Rushing Nunnally. We built as we went. We learned as we went. There were challenges and deadlines, beautiful light and impossible light, plans that worked and plans that changed completely once we arrived. And, perhaps most importantly, there was humility. The kind of humility that comes from realizing no matter how much you know about your craft, there is always something left to learn.
But when I think about these years, I don’t think first about the covers. I think about the people on them. The families who let me into their lives. The professionals who trusted me with the way their stories would be seen. The children who grew up a little between one photograph and the next. The conversations before and after the shutter clicked. The people I might never have known had a camera and a magazine not given me a reason to meet them.
That has been the greatest honor of all.
I am deeply grateful to Alaina for the opportunity to create something alongside her for these past five years, and I’m excited to see where Nikki’s own creative vision takes the covers from here. Part of making something you care about is understanding that it was never meant to remain exactly as you made it.
And so a new season is here. This is by no means the end of my photography journey. I am still booking private photography sessions for seniors, families and professionals, as well as expanding recently into campaign media photography for political candidates. The camera isn’t going anywhere. Neither is the part of me that is always chasing light.
When I look back on these five years, I will remember the challenges, for sure. But I will also remember how much they taught me. I will remember my personal growth, creative expansion, unexpected friendships and the duty that comes from being trusted to tell someone else’s story visually.
Five years. So many faces. So many stories. And the privilege, for a season, of being the person on the other side of the lens.
