Infinitely curious with an itch to create.
I’m the kind of person that likes to dive DEEP when I come across something that interests me. Diving deep is a mellow way to put it, I obsess. I first noticed this with the guitar in 9th grade. A friend of mine taught me how to read guitar tablature. Armed with that knowledge and the Internet, I looked up the tabs for all my favorite songs and played them over and over again.
I started writing original songs and played in a few bands throughout high school and for a few years after. I see a lot of similarities between making photographs and making music, but this bit ain’t about the music part of being in a band. Bands require graphics work: t-shirts, flyers, album art, stickers, and general merchandise. We did a lot of this design (admittedly not great) ourselves.
Eventually the bands fizzled out and I pivoted my one-track mind to design. I earned a degree in interactive media design, which included a mix of graphic/interactive/motion design and audio production. I honed my skills and learned the necessary software. But mostly importantly, I became a life-long learner.
After graduating, I spent 12 years working at two creative agencies, one as a project manager and one as a partner. During that time, I interacted with dozens of small- and medium-sized businesses through branding, website, and print projects. It was a great opportunity to get a glimpse of the inner workings of businesses in a variety of industries. One of the issues that continually arose was clients didn’t have high-quality visual assets to use in their marketing efforts. We had to halt design while we searched for appropriate stock photos. However, stock images never felt genuine and often detracted from the message. Eventually, I decided it was time for a DEEP DIVE into photography, to better serve our clients.
The thing about finding your passion is you want to do it all the time. I discovered I wasn’t able to photograph as much as I wanted because my job was getting in the way. So, I struck out on my own to do photography and videography full-time.
Through the years, I’ve learned this about myself: I’ve got an itch to create. I look at making photos & videos in much the same way as I look at making music. You start from nothing and you end up with something tangible, something special. Like music, sometimes I do photo or video work alone and sometimes I collaborate with others. The end result is ALWAYS better when I collaborate. Let’s make cool stuff together.
-Jeff