Documentary photographer

I am a middle-aged, elder-millennial, born and raised in North Carolina. I lived in twenty-two homes growing up, ended up graduating High School in Germany, and then back to NC for college. Since then I’ve lived in Virginia, Colorado, Minnesota, Arizona, and currently in California. I’ve got a family I’m trying hard to steer in the right direction - my wife Amanda, and our two awesome kids. We also have a Jenn. Our extended family is a mixture of some of our relatives and close friends.

We try to live our life by cultural standards, most importantly, the culture of generosity. I think it’s really important to live your life with purpose, aiming for a target. For me, that target looks like a life that honors and respects all people, elevates the oppressed, and is defined by generosity.

I’ve always loved the arts. Over time, those passions have taken on various forms of life. In my younger years, I was a jazz musician. I even planned to go to college for jazz studies. I dreamed of being a band director. When I started college, I shifted more towards being a guitarist and ended up playing guitar and singing in a fairly successful hip-hop band. When that ended, I started doing the singer/songwriter thing. I still kind of do that.

While music has always been a major part of my life, I’ve also had a camera in my hand for most of my adult life as well. I had a Canon point-and-shoot in High School that I use to load up with cheap film and take pics all the time with. Then it was a Pentax SLR with a 50mm. Eventually I went digital with a Nikon, moved to Canon for a few years, and eventually landed with Sony for video work and Leica for photography. Can't beat a Leica M. Period.

Photography became a larger and larger part of my life because of my family. It just became harder and harder to be a family man and a musician. With photography, my family can be with me most of the time, and I can edit and work on projects sitting on the couch with the kids playing in the same room. This is a big deal for the season I’m in.

At the end of the day, I’m an artist and my passions are in the realms of art. It’s music. It’s photography. It’s videography. It’s design. It’s typography. It’s writing. It’s creative.

First, let me say that I believe everything in life requires faith. In faith we believe that our day will go as planned, that Abraham Lincoln was in-fact a real person, and that the digital money in our bank accounts isn’t going to magically disappear. The only way to live without faith is to live with certainty, and our tiny minds can only witness and experience so much certainty. Most of life is uncertainty. Enter faith.

Since that’s our reality, we get to choose the recipients of our faith. I am a Christian, but a “love your neighbor” type of Christian. It’s sad I have to qualify that. I absolutely reject Christian Nationalism, systemic oppression, and mainline evangelical theology.

I try to live out my Christian faith in both my personal and professional life by simply pursuing what the Bible calls the “fruits of the Spirit.” These are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That is how I practice my faith. That is what guides me.