About me

My Story

My interest in making photographs came about in 1986, when as a partner in an art-glass business, I wanted to learn how to take better promotional pictures of our glass artwork. I enrolled in my first photography class at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, and found that my interest in making a better photograph was to go far beyond my expectations.

I began to acquire a true appreciation of photography as an art form, and the potential power of the single image. Following several classes, I began to create far more professional looking product photographs, both for our business and for other artists who were looking for equally better representations of their work. Yet I kept the more artistic pursuit of photography as a hobby until 1993, when I decided to leave my former business and began commercial freelancing in Chicago.

Moving to eastern Kansas from Chicago in 1994, my interest in the midwestern prairie landscape developed into a long-term personal photographic project, and I began to mix in more of my personal photographic interests into my freelancing. Eventually, the idea of seeing wedding photography as a less-scripted photo documentary became more accepted, and I felt that my personal love of street photography could transition me into a new way of approaching a subject that I had little prior interest in.

Interestingly enough, contrary to being in the age of "photographer specialization", my photographic diversity in other areas, including landscape, travel and art have gotten me many of my wedding bookings from couples who found me through a shared interest in those subjects.

My Style

I photograph weddings in a documentary style, recording your story naturally, as it unfolds throughout the day. It’s lifestyle photography, with me as an observer, seeing both the overall picture of your wedding as well as the details, looking to capture you and your guests in the act of being yourselves -

alone or with others, caught up in the moment, expressing things the way they are, without dressing them up.

Of course there’s always time for the planned moments - such as family photos and some formal shots of the bride and groom - that honor the classic wedding tradition.

The personal connection

I feel that there are three things which are important to a good working relationship -

To provide pictures that will let you remember how you felt on your wedding day.

To listen to your needs and deliver what I’ve promised.

To be easy and enjoyable to work with, so that you can enjoy your day.

Your experience.

As we get to know each other through an engagement session and discussions, I get a sense of your personalities, and what is important to you.

...the getting ready, the planning, the anxiety and joy, trying to capture a look, a smile, a tear, a gesture of affection.

It’s about living in the moment. Your marraige is creating a new family, and future generations will be able to experience your day as it truly happened.

I believe in photography as an expression of the moment, freezing in time a certain quality which at best can transcend its subject. In a world filled with rapidly changing images, a single picture can have the power to stimulate one's imagination. Images that can evoke special moments, or inspire a viewers imagination to see a subject in a different way, is for me, what makes photography an art form.