I love stories. They make us, they explain the world to us, and they are the road we travel through in life. I've always loved telling them, whether it was short stories and poems I wrote in high school or photographs of people on the streets of Chicago. I studied journalism at Northwestern University and then told stories for newspapers for a few years, sometimes with words and sometimes with photographs. When I left journalism, I earned an MBA in finance at UW-Madison and spent a decade analyzing investment stories, researching them to see if the story a company was telling is likely to be true. During those years, I began to develop my own photographic documentary stories, roaming across the country with a brick of Tri-X and my trusty Leica at hand.
But investment stories are all too similar to keep me occupied for life. So I quit the business, took a scholarship to the University of Arkansas, and earned my MFA in creative writing. I taught English and creative writing while setting up a commercial studio in Milwaukee and spent time in Eastern Europe trying to tell the story of post-Soviet life there. Along the way, I met my future wife, Olga, and my short stay in Ukraine turned into several years of exploration and love. Olga was the one who saw the obvious: Tell love stories, and make your passion your business.
I have received numerous awards for my photography and been published in US and international newspapers and magazines. I am available for weddings and events, news, long-form documentary, and commercial work.