I majored in English at university and had nothing but a six-month stint as a miserable copywriter to show for it. Cue the classic existential crisis and I fell right back into my heart’s true bliss. I freelanced as a camera operator and editor, then tripped into architectural photography right when the housing market nosedived in 2008. Not long after, I was all in—full-time architectural photographer. It proved to be the right balance of: “It pays the bills and gives me a degree of creative freedom.”

The work on this page deviates from my commercial work because it’s a blend of technical obsession and an interpretive point of view of the world. Many of my images aren’t just documentation of time and space, but intentional manipulations to project the world as it plays in my head. I am heavily inspired by bucolic scenes from the Baroque era, and the dramatic displays of light from masters such as Rembrandt and Caravaggio. I often frame things in a way to glamorize the architecture of both man and nature but am always looking for the opportunity to add the human element to awaken a heartbeat in the image.

The process for a single image is involved, often requiring days of planning, travel, luck, and prayer. Many of the photos are blends of multiple frames taken over several hours (or even on multiple days) to piece all of the elements together to match my imagination. I will get up every day at 4 am to hike to a spot, and if the light sucks, I’ll do it again tomorrow, and if I need a cow or a human to walk in my frame, I will wait for hours until the universe makes it so. It’s often an exercise in madness and futility that I can’t help but laugh off when drenched in a storm after praying for the sun to bless me with the perfect directional light. Many hopeless days have been saved with last-minute heroics from nature or a sudden impulsive shift of creative direction that made whiskey from sour lemons.

And some images are just dumb luck and I would be full of shit if I claimed any kind of master plan behind them. Right place. Right time: creating new opportunities when fate had other ideas.

This work is a compilation of my best-laid plans and my happy accidents.

Much of my free time is mostly spent vegetating at home with my dog. Otherwise, I am likely getting a workout, trying to keep my garden alive, looking for new peaty scotch to savor, or coaching the Miami Heat from my sofa as if I could play better at 5’8 with bad hamstrings.