I spent years
not answering
the thing that
kept calling.

This is what finally made me pick up….

HOW I GOT HERE

Photography didn't find me once…
It found me over and over again.

I grew up in a house full of artists. My mother painted. My brother drew, beautifully, constantly. I spent years looking for my version of that. But no matter what I tried, I never felt like I was truly creating. I felt like I was performing someone else's gift.

That feeling followed me into school. With four fundamentally different parents, I'd learned early to adapt, to wear whatever version of myself fit the moment, to blend into whatever room I was in. I had more friends than I could count, and for a while I thought that meant I was doing something right. But eventually it started to feel like I didn't truly belong anywhere, even when I was surrounded by people.

Then a Portrait Changed Everything

By my senior year I was struggling, depressed, acting out, skipping school. I missed portrait day. When it finally hit me that I wouldn't appear in the yearbook, the thought of being forgotten affected me more than I expected. It wasn't really about the photo. It was about mattering. About leaving some proof that I had been there.

Then something unexpected happened.

A friend of mine on the yearbook team was shooting an article called Setting the Scene, photographing students in their bedrooms as a reflection of who they were. She heard I'd missed portrait day and offered to include me.

Everybody knew me as the Bulls kid. So, she photographed me in my room, my jersey, my hair dyed like Dennis Rodman, my Bulls posters covering the walls. When the yearbook came out, she didn't just include me, she made me impossible to miss. Placed as the centerfold for the article, right before the school portraits began. While everyone else had the same traditional headshot, mine told you something real about who I was.

She unknowingly created a portrait that would change the way I see things for the rest of my life.

That was the first time I understood what a photograph could do when it was made with intention.

I even spoke to a school counselor about pursuing photography as a career. I was told not to bother. So, I didn't…not yet. Life moved on. But photography kept finding its way back.

I Started Over…
More Than Once.

Eventually never came, until everything fell apart at once. My health. Relationships. The ground I thought I was standing on. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, the quiet voice stopped being quiet.

It started screaming.

I walked out and bought my first professional camera. I enrolled in school. I told my instructor on day one that I was going to become a professional photographer. I was terrified, afraid I'd fail, and then afraid when things started working.

I've fought for this at every turn. Battled an autoimmune disease that took my energy and more than once my sense of self. Watched the business I built collapse when COVID arrived, and started over. Not because I had a plan. Because I didn't know how to stop.

I've also been held up by people who believed in me when I couldn't. I carry that into every session I do.

I didn't fall into this. I've been fighting for it with all of my being.

Living The Dream I Was Told Not to Chase

And somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, the work started to speak for itself.

I've been published in magazines and featured in news articles. I've won international awards for my boudoir photography. I've photographed best-selling authors, watched clients travel across Texas just to step in front of my camera, and built something I'm genuinely proud of, from scratch, more than once.

None of it came easily. None of it was handed to me. But I'm still here, still shooting, still completely in love with what I do.

The dream I was told not to chase? I'm living it.