My background with photography started in a dual point North Georgia College and State University 1999-2001 studio art with black and white film photography. In 2000, in the U.S. Army Reserves as a 25V Combat Documentation and Production Specialist, also known as a Combat Photographer. Upon graduating from the Defense Information School at Ft. Meade, MD, with certifications in still photography, studying 35mm film photography, and video production. Over the course of the next 10 years, I was deployed all over the Middle East as a combat photographer for the 982nd Combat Camera Company (Airborne). I spent 36 months covering the entirety of the Iraq War from 2003-2009, with roughly 450 combat missions run and several months in Egypt documenting a training mission going on. It was time to start focusing on other types of work.
After 2010, upon getting out of the Reserves. I started focusing my photography more towards a street and architecture path. Over the years, I had off and on covered live shows from 2004-2007, but never pursued it further. In 2014, I was given an opportunity to be the venue photographer for a music venue in Knoxville, TN, called The International, with its second stage venue, The Concourse, as well. Concert photography has become a passion since then. I find that my background with the more extreme side of photojournalism has given me a unique and very definitive style towards live music work. To capture the attitude of the music, the musician, and the entire moment so that the viewer can feel like they were there is something amazing and beautiful. Combine that with the fashion work that I now do, and it has allowed me the freedom to escape the paradigms of modern fashion and that of the Photoshop shooter.
Most of society has turned into a copy/paste mentality, and it has come through in every aspect of culture, including photography. With the newly apparent easy access to AI, finding truly unique and individual work is to find something truly unique and not generically disposable is a wonderful thing. I find that the style I have developed for my work captures the past 25 years of struggle, pain, anguish, and love, both with film photography and with digital photography. I am always focusing and refocusing myself towards bigger and better goals.