About Me

I am a professional photographer, currently located in Minneapolis, MN, with my BA in Photography from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.  Having grown up in a small farming community in southern Illinois, photography has become an essential element to me in connecting with others through a common medium.  It is from this connection that I photograph not only people but food. Though my fascination with capturing the essence of a person in a photograph is perhaps where I find the most emotion and creativity, it is in photographing food that I feel a connection to my upbringing, growing up in the kitchen with my mom and grandparents, and always preparing fresh dishes with ingredients sourced from our gardens.

While much of my work is digital, I enjoy shooting and developing film and scanning it or printing it in the darkroom.  My film work is influenced by the works of many 20th century photographers, such as Avedon, Penn, and Mapplethorpe. Though I may primarily shoot digitally, seeing my images come to life on celluloid and then watching as they almost magically appear on silver gelatin paper is both inspirational and rejuvenating.  Along with film, I also shoot tintypes, a process developed in the mid-1850s which requires a plate to be made, exposed, and developed within about 15 minutes.  The inherent organic qualities of tintypes, a result of mixing various chemicals together to create a photograph, fascinates me and further inspires me.  In all of my photographs, I pay close attention to the shape and quality of light and its interaction with the subject to create a visually compelling image.