Frequently Asked Questions

I get asked a lot of questions via email and direct messaging from other photographers. Here’s some of the most common ones.

How did you get your start in photography?

Before I was a photographer I was a freelance designer, in Nashville, which after after a couple of years I turned into a design firm with 2 employees. One day, five years into it, I was on the beach with my family and I had an epiphany. I was getting burned out in my career.

I had moved from a rented office to a home one and my employees worked out of their homes. I was working alone, staring at a computer all day; and as I stood on the beach on that sunny day I realized I needed a change.

Some of what I did was creating web sites. Once you build a web site, it was never truly done; there are updates and changes that can go on for over a year. I had begun shooting some photography for a few of my design clients and I loved the way it kept me working with people face to face, it was always a different experience and once a project was done I could move on to another one.

My whole career has been built on huge leaps of faith. Nothing seems impossible to me and I’ve always thought that if someone else can do something then I can as well. So as I stood there with the ocean breeze in my face I made a decision right there on the spot to shut down the design firm and do my photography full-time.

That was 18 years ago and it was the best career decision I’ve ever made. I love what I do. I actually look forward to Mondays so I can go back to my office and dream up new ideas or plan for upcoming shoots.

I get asked this a lot. I primarily shoot two things: entertainment and advertising photography and that’s by choice. These two genres of photography are my absolute favorite. If I had to dial it down, on the entertainment side I love working with people who have some unique look or character trait to them. I love working with and capturing someone’s outward appearance to show who the person is on the inside.

With Advertising it doesn’t get much better for me than lifestyle shoots where we make up a lot of it as we go along. I love a good pre-planned shoot, but there’s so much fun in the spontaneity of just walking around a city or area and trying things on the fly.

What’s your favorite things to shoot?

I started my career briefly shooting on film, but I was one of the first people I knew to begin using digital as their only medium. When I began we had a pretty legit darkroom built into our first house in Nashville, but It wasn’t long after that I abandoned it for my DSLR’s.

To me film is nostalgic and romantic, but not very practical in today’s age, at least not in commercial photography. Occasionally I’ll use my Pentacon Six medium format camera for film shoots. I do however love my several Polaroid cameras and use them often. As I mentioned in my bio, my father worked for Polaroid for 15 years and I’ve been a fan ever since.

Digital or Film?

The gear that I mainly use is…

Canon cameras for digital
Polaroid and Pentacon cameras for film
Profoto lights and modifiers for all of my lighting
Apple computers
Sandisk memory cards
Think Tank camera bags

What gear do you use?

If you’ve read my about page you know that I’ve lived all over the place. I lived in 25 different cities before I was 21. After getting married my Wife and I moved from South Florida to Atlanta, then Costa Mesa, CA and then to Nashville.

We chose Nashville because I had just started my career as a freelance graphic designer and we wanted to move back east. To do design work for the entertainment industry the place to be were: L.A., NYC or Nashville. So after 2 years in Southern California we packed up and moved to Nashville. We had never been there and only knew 2 people, but it was a risk that paid off.

After running a successful design firm for a few years I decided to do my photography full-time. Nashville has been very good to me. It’s a very creative city that has inspired me as a photographer.

Why Nashville?