Zion Crossroads, VA
I became interested in travel and photography in 2005, during a semester abroad, and upon graduating in 2006, my first major purchase was my first DSLR. While working as an engineer, I dreamed of living abroad, and purchased a one-way ticket to New Zealand, ultimately moving there in April, 2008.
I spent the next seven years abroad, in New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Vietnam, and Nepal, and spent time traveling throughout Asia and Africa. I taught English. I lived in a van. I worked at a ski resort. I drove a forklift. I saw literal lions, tigers, and bears in the wild. All this time, my love for photography and nature grew, and I dreamed of returning to the US to pursue a career as a nature photographer.
I returned to Colorado in 2015. I poured all my time, energy, and money into turning my passion for travel and photography into what has become a successful career. I've spent too much time at art shows in the last eight years, but I've also found time to spend a summer in Alaska, three weeks in Iceland, a week photographing polar bears in Canada, a few weeks in Hawaii, three weeks in Africa photographing mountain gorillas and other wildlife, a month driving through Patagonia while living out of a camper van, and I've driven through at least 45 of our 50 states, photographing many of them along the way.
When I'm taking photos, my objective is to present nature at its most beautiful. This often means scouting a location, and then returning multiple times, in order to get proper lighting. One of the photos I've submitted is titled “Rainbow Rocks,” taken in Glacier National Park. I'd seen these rocks on previous trips to Glacier, but had never gotten a photo that I was content with. On a 2020 trip to Glacier, I got it. I set my tripod up as low as possible, and focused my camera on the foreground, then “closed the aperture” down to increase the depth-of-field, and to create the sunstars visible in the image. The problem was that the rocks were dry. I grabbed a cooking pot from my van, and filled it with lake water, then ran to the rocks, and poured the water on them. This being the middle of summer, it evaporated almost instantly. So I had to run back and forth from the lake to my camera, pouring more and more water on the rocks. Eventually, they cooled down and stayed wet long enough to capture what ended up being one of my favorite images.
Between shows, I photograph the beauty of the United States, but my love for international travel hasn't diminished.
