Where did the vision come from? Because it would be easy to do headshots just like everybody else,
you know, or just kind of keep the status quo. So what drove you to
change it up a little bit and make it different?
So the this approach came from me being a creative person before photography. So I am 35.
Yeah, 35. You know, after 25, you start forgetting what age you are. So yeah, I'm 35.
Yeah, no, I've got you beat by one year on that. So you got me beat by one kid,
I got you beat by one year. So I've always been a creative individual. My whole family is very
blessed with creativity. My two older brothers and I, we're all drawing like nerds. We do always
drawing Legos just and then I got into 3D graphics, which led to Photoshop, which then led to image
manipulation. And so around middle school, I was tinkering around with Photoshop, composite editing
and special effects and even 3D graphics too, which is way ahead of my time. And so that was
like the foundation for what would come later, which is in high school, I discovered photography.
And the camera to me was like this new awesome art and pencil and paper, it was a new art medium
that I could create imagery on. And, you know, I didn't even think of myself as a photographer,
I was taking pictures that I so that I could edit those in Photoshop and do cool stuff with them.
And that's sort of where it started. But then fast forward about 10 years, I'm pretty deep into
portraiture. I discovered, I love portraits, I love people, I love their stories and their unique
beauty. And I can capture that with photography, you know, among other art forms, photography for
me was the easiest and most immediate, you know, instead of sitting and painting for an hour, it's
like take a picture and it's done, mostly. It was quick and it was immediate gratification. But I
discovered portraiture. And then I think it was around 2014, my best friend and I, he said,
hey, let's go to Comic Con. Let's do pictures at Comic Con. I was like, I never been to one. I
never even I don't even know what that is. Like I'm a nerd. I love all things. I actually changed
out of my Star Wars shirt just to be a little more professional. But I love Star Wars. I have
four lightsabers. I know way too much about Lord of the Rings. I'm a huge geek through and through.
So there's that. But that crossroads met with my photography and around 2014, 2015, when I started
doing cosplay photo shoots, and I loved it was so fun. And every cosplay, by the way, cosplay stands
for costume play, generally is for adults as well, where they're dressing them as a character from
a book, a movie, an anime, a comic book, whatever. And there's also themes like you could just dress
up as a Renaissance person or, you know, a 80s person like that could be cosplay in a sense, but
mostly cosplay is a specific character. So anyway, cosplay photography became my specialty and still
is and I love it. It's so fun. But each cosplay shoot is very unique because every character is
different. So I kind of brought that into my other photo shoots, like my family sessions,
my senior photo shoots of graduates, even like kids photos. And I started asking these questions
like what, what do you love? What are you into? You know, mostly for seniors, this really applies
to seniors. Awesome. What are you into? What do you love? What entertainment do you like? What are
your goals and dreams? What's your personality? What's your style? Like all these questions I
start gathering and that that allows me to craft a unique experience for them that captures their
unique personality because every person is very different. And I try not to be that cookie cutter
photographer where, okay, we, we, everyone hires me, we all need it to either one of these three
parks. And I only do park photos. I only do sunset time. I only do these, these specific style. And
if you hire, if you want that, you hire me. There's nothing wrong with that. Most of my friends do
that. And I do a little bit as well, but I started going beyond that equation, that cookie cutter
and saying, all right, what awesome epic stuff could I make that's different? And it'll stand out.