Purpose Driven

I picked up a camera back in 2018, shortly after a girl I was seeing died in a fatal car accident. Her name was Abby Mae. She was a rockstar photographer, a vibrant soul, and a blessing of existence. She had dreams of working as a photographer and traveling the world. And I am committed to living out this legacy for her.

Initially, I only approached photography half-heartedly for a few years. It wasn't until I took that road-trip out to New Mexico in 2021 that I began to see it as a part of my purpose in this life. It was late February, I packed all of my gear and an inflatable mattress into the back of my dad's Jeep Wrangler and I set off on a 3.5-week journey to the western USA. I had been on a few overnight backpacking trips before, but this was my first extended minimalist journey. And I loved every single moment of it. Along the way, I made pictures documenting my experience and I fell in love with photography as a medium to share and better understand the way that I see the world.

Immediately upon arriving home, I began dreaming about my next expedition... the following Spring, May 5, 2022, I quit my job and set off on a 6-month journey around the western USA in my new-to-me 1997 Toyota 4Runner. I ripped out all of the seats except the driver's & built a small living situation inside of it. With plans to hit every National Park west of Colorado, I was ready for the open road. The purpose of this journey being intensely clear to me:

I am going to become a photographer.

Continued...

I returned home from that legendary 6-month expedition in November of 2022. I crash landed back at my dad's place with about $500 to my name. I was broke & exhausted... but far from broken.

On the road, I had fallen in love with photographing human behavior and the synchronicity of life. This ultimately manifested as an obsession with the genre of Street Photography. Within a month of my return to Pennsylvania, I was out in my local city Allentown almost every day making pictures like my life depended on it. I fell in love with the people of Allentown. And they loved me. Together, we created a beautiful portfolio of work documenting what it was like to be in that city at that time, The Allentown Archive.

It only took a couple months of consistently sharing this work when a few posts blew up. I was the only guy in the street at that time, so there was naturally a lot of interest in what I was doing. It was different, and I showed the city in a light that not many saw it. "Allentown, in the Snow," a collection of photographs made during a blizzard in the city, received well over 400 shares on Facebook.

It wasn't long before people started reaching out and asking me to do other projects. I had a breakthrough with my first paid gig in February of 2023. It was a Real Estate photoshoot.

As it turns out, it was for an agent that moved about 80+ properties a year.

She loved my work, I became her Dude...

And the rest is history.

(And yes... I still drive that old Toyota to a lot of my shoots.)