Photography found me fairly late in the game (or fairly early if I somehow live to be 150). Like many kids, I grew up drawing superheroes, athletes, wrestlers, and cartoons. It was the first thing that I remember people telling me I was pretty good at. However, it never occurred to me that art was something grown ups could do for money, so I bounced around from major to major, garage band to bartender, until I found my way back to art and a painting degree. Holding that paint brush was like putting on a favorite sweatshirt I thought I’d lost in a move.

Right out of college, I moved back to Nashville and began selling admission tickets at the Frist Art Museum. Every day I’d go to work and get an unlimited IV drip of inspiration and new perspectives from the art on loan from around the world.

I eventually found that while having my own exhibition in a museum was a dream, it was not my calling. By learning graphic design, I could be a part of every exhibition.

After over a decade of designing the identity, print and gallery graphics for nearly 40 exhibitions, I followed another interest of mine in comedy writing and jumped to sports talk radio, working with Steve Gorman of the Black Crowes to create and produce a music, sports, and comedy radio show that would air locally and nationally for over 5 years. When that time came to an end, I was lucky enough to get invited back to the Frist, and a camera was put in my hand to create videos for social media and in the exhibitions.

And if you’re still reading this, congrats, you’ve finally reached the portion that brings us to photography. I had no intentions of becoming a photographer. That was what my wife did in college and for many years after. It was her thing. But turned out the DSLR camera in my hand that I used for shooting videos ALSO took photographs.

I was never a very patient painter. If I had something in mind, I wanted to create it now. The immediacy of the camera gave me everything I was looking for and the subject matter was unlimited. Now I get to follow all my interests–sports, music, wrestling, people– and turn them into the art that I believe them to be, all while holding the camera in my hand