Bio

I was born March 19th, 1982. My hometown is Minneapolis, Minnesota and I lived there for the first 18 years of my life.
 
Growing up I never liked traditional school very much - I wasn't a good student and I couldn’t concentrate. So when I heard about the Peprich Center for the Arts in junior year - a real prestigious place - I had to apply. I didn’t know what I wanted to do so I tried for the media arts program, which included everything from animation to photography. I didn’t have the required portfolio to apply so I called my friend Lisa and used her portfolio as my own. I was accepted two months later. When I arrived and couldn’t tell the difference between an aperture and a shutter speed, they were a little confused.



After graduating I went to Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California. In my school days I always took fashion pictures because I realized that when you don't know what you're doing, it's easier to make a nice picture when there's a pretty girl in front of the camera. It wasn't until after I graduated three years later that I realized that the fashion world wasn’t for me.



With a degree in advertising photography I moved to New York City and got a job at an ad agency. I worked for 8 months in the art production department. I learned a lot and decided that assisting photographers would be my next step.
 
Six months later I was offered a year-long scholarship at Fabrica, Benetton’s creative research center in Treviso, Italy. My first job at Fabrica was to photograph people in the street for a weekly magazine. I shot complete strangers so I had to figure out a way to light them quickly. I learned that if I brought an assistant and had them hold the light in their hands we could work much faster. This is how I developed my style of journalistic portraits without much setup. Most of my portraits only require one or two lights and many of them are of complete strangers I stop on the street.


Now I'm lucky enough to live in New York, working for lots of great magazines and advertising agencies. I strive to continue telling other people’s stories. Life is fascinating and photography is my excuse to see as many angles of the big picture as I can. Everyone has a different way of seeing the world. I’ve photographed the CEO of one of the world’s largest energy companies and I’ve photographed a man that goes to bed early every night because he can’t pay his electric bill.
 I want my work to represent every point on the human scale.