Going Back a Bit

In this post, the self portraits were taken when I was 15 and all other photos were taken when I was 16 or 17.

Maybe this is a filler post so that I may finally publish my website. But here we go. I began photography long before I got into metal. It started with my love of Colorado.

nature photography

I was 6 the first time I met Colorado. For a decade, my family would go every summer to visit my grandparents. They lived in a tourist town, Estes Park. It has some of the best trails, as far as I know since they are some of the only ones I have hiked outside of North Carolina. I wanted to capture the silence. I did not know anything could be so silent and yet so vast.

self portrait photography

Photographers turn the camera on themselves at one point or another and I was about 12 when I began experimenting with (self) portraits. I could say all kinds of philosophical things about experimenting with self portraits but simply, it was a way to see myself.

street (or candid) photography

I was 13 or 14 when I turned the camera on people other than myself or family. I began going to seasonal camps in large cities and would capture people on the street or peers at events I attended. At this time I had been gifted a point-and-shoot camera that was easy to carry around.

live music photography

There was a small local music scene that I knew of as a (pre)teen and I began delving into it when I was about 13. I would take photos of bands out in parks, basements, garages, and then finally venues when I was 16.

The first official concert I photographed was at the now defunct The Brewery, Raleigh, NC, on February 11, 2007. The headlining band was Ghost of a Fallen Age.

why photography

So maybe I started photography with amazement of silences, all the while believing I was not a part of them. I have since learned that it is the energy of place, time, feeling that I am photographing and sharing—of which I am a part. It has always been difficult for me to describe why I photograph but I have come to certain descriptors like the above: energy, beauty, rawness, haunting, loneliness, introspection, exploration, truth. The answer to the why of art is generally it is. A favorite motto of mine is c’est la vie (“such is life” / “it is life”) and it is the answer I provide for many things, including why I photograph, write, research, read, and so on.