I think I’ve been a photographer for much longer than I’ve owned a camera.

Growing up in Maryland, my family spent our weekends traveling to craft fairs and small towns up and down the East Coast. I remember sitting in the backseat, staring out the window at the passing landscape and trying to hold onto certain scenes in my mind. In a strange way, the car window was my viewfinder and my mind was the film. I didn’t know it then, but I was already learning to see the world in photographs.

I bought my first nice point and shoot camera before a trip to Northern California and Yosemite in 2017. Some time after that trip, the camera was stolen. I didn’t stop taking pictures. I just started using my phone instead.

At the time, I was working in construction, spending much of my time outdoors in wetlands and other wild places. I would regularly find myself wandering away from whatever I was supposed to be doing because I had noticed something I wanted to photograph. Eventually, I realized I wasn’t just enjoying photography on the side. I wanted it to be my life.

So I went back to school.

I got my first DSLR camera and from there photography became less of a hobby and more of an obsession. I learned how to work with light, how to build photographs deliberately, and how to make images for people and businesses rather than simply for myself.

During school, I discovered that I loved studio photography, just not necessarily photographing people. I became fascinated with photographing objects and products and began pursuing commercial photography as a career. During my junior year, I photographed merchandise for country artist Eric Church’s website. In my senior year, I interned with Kirkland’s Home as an on-white photographer, and doing some lifestyle work as well.

After graduating, I spent two years as a lifestyle photographer for Dollar General’s pOpshelf brand.

I was proud of the career I was building. I had imagined it going much further.

Then I was let go.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if that was the thing that finally gave me permission to go after the reason I picked up a camera in the first place.

I wanted to go somewhere beautiful and photograph it.

I’ve always been drawn to the outdoors. As a kid, my grandparents had a piece of land we called the farm, and whenever I was there, I wanted nothing more than to disappear into the woods. Not because I was trying to get away from anything. I just wanted to see what was out there.

That feeling never really left me.

Whenever I see a big enough mountain, I want to climb it. A dense enough forest, I want to find out what’s hiding inside. An ocean deep enough, I want to know what exists beneath the surface.

Photography gives me a reason to follow that curiosity.

Today, I primarily photograph landscapes and wildlife, but I’m still drawn to the same thing that fascinated me when I was younger, moments and places that make me stop and look. Sometimes that’s a mountain covered in morning light. Sometimes it’s an animal doing something completely unexpected. Sometimes it’s a crowded city street where, for a split second, everything comes together.

I’m always looking for that moment.

I don’t think photography has necessarily changed the way I see the world. It has given me the opportunity to share the way I already see it with people who are willing to look.

That’s what I want my photographs to do.

I don’t want my work to be something that someone walks past and says, “That’s pretty.”

I want it to make them curious.

I want someone to stand in front of one of my photographs and wonder where it was taken, what happened just before the shutter opened, what it felt like to stand there. I want it to bring back a memory, stir an emotion, or remind someone of a place they’ve never even been.

And ultimately, I want my work to start conversations.

The photographs I make are meant to live in homes where art is meant to be experienced—not simply used to fill an empty wall. I want someone to live with one of my photographs for years and continue finding something in it. Something they didn’t notice the first time. Something that means something different five years later.

I’m still building this.

I’m still exploring. Still learning. Still trying to make the next photograph better than the last one.

But I know now that this is where I belong.

Every print I release is a small piece of that journey, a place I’ve stood, a moment I’ve experienced, and a way I’ve chosen to remember it.

If one of my photographs finds its way into your home, I hope it becomes more than a photograph.

I hope it becomes part of your story, too.