I grew up in a small town and worked on my dad’s farm when I was old enough. I began my photographic journey when I was twelve years old, that was when I first fell in love with photography. My mother was an avid antique collector and one day she and I where traveling into the city which was about an hour away to go to an antique store in the Brookside neighborhood of Kansas City, a place I would later move to in my twenties.
As we walked from our car there was one shop in particular that caught my eye. It was a camera store. I was intrigued by the cameras I saw through the window, they looked so interesting. I asked my mother if we could go into the camera store and look around after we were done antiquing. She was a gracious and loving woman who would do almost anything for her children, so of course she agreed.
That first trip to the camera shop is were my love of photography began. I was in awe of the mechanical intricacy and the beautiful design of the cameras and lenses. I spent quite a bit of time looking at the different models and asking the store clerk questions about how the cameras worked. I didn’t get a camera that day, that would happen later that year at Christmas, but I did start to study photography. My photographic journey had begun.
I studied photography in High School and also in college. I received my undergraduate degree at the University of Missouri. I started as a journalism major but quickly discovered that my style of photography did not fit the newspaper ideal. I spent many years discovering for myself what my mind wanted to see come out of my camera. I spent many hours perfecting the craft of black & white printing in a small room under an orange light.
I attended graduate school at the Savannah College of Art and Design where I earned a Masters degree in fine art photography. The time that I spent at art school opened my eyes to greater possibilities of expression. I had always taken photographs that were not the kind you would find in travel magazines. I have an eye for things normally overlooked. At SCAD I started to push my visuals even farther from the normal idea of what a photograph should be.
I have been teaching photography classes part time at Southwest Baptist University since 2015. I recently self published a photo book of work that I did between 2009 and 2021 titled “Everything In It’s Place”.