Landscape Photographer & Artist
Storytelling through
limited edition prints.
After months of dedicated and meticulous planning — and after what felt like a squandered opportunity in Hawaii — we were already having a productive first visit to Scotland. But it wasn't until an early morning trip to photograph Kilchurn Castle at sunrise that I realized I was well and truly hooked on landscape photography.
We set out from our B&B in the wee hours, driving south out of Glencoe with a hope and a prayer for good light; it was too early to tell. Halfway there I realized the rental was on "E," and the panic started to set in — Scotland doesn't have the abundant 24-hour gas stations we're accustomed to in the US. Sweating it, I decided to press on and hope we could make the round trip back to a station after sunrise.
Arriving at the GPS coordinates, still in the dark of night, I pulled off on the side of the road. No marker, completely nondescript. Looking across a field I could just make out what I thought was the castle. I set off across the swampy ground, gear in tow, thankful for the wellies I'd bought a few days earlier. I was alone when I made the shoreline. Loch Awe was mirror-still. Fog was rolling across the water, slowly, threatening to consume the castle in mist.
Blue hour light crept across the sky. Then, by a small miracle, the fog drifted behind the castle — making the scene rather than obscuring it, separating the castle from the hill behind. I set up my tripod with some reeds in the foreground to balance the composition, and began to photograph. A visiting German photographer joined me and we shared our enthusiasm for what was playing out in front of us. The light kept getting better and better. I was giddy. I was hooked. My wife joined me as the sun rose on a perfect Highland scene; we couldn't believe our luck.
Two frames from that morning, minutes apart, at Loch Awe.
Afterward we made it back to a gas station — blessedly close, and open — filled up, and got back to the B&B in time for a proper Scottish breakfast. I knew then that these were the kinds of memories I wanted to make, capture, and share. I haven't looked back since.
That morning is still the clearest example of what I've been chasing ever since. The camera recorded a single instant. What I carried home was something else — two hours of cold and fog and arriving light, and the disbelief of watching it come together. My photographs are an attempt at that second thing. I'm not trying to document a place so much as reproduce what it felt like to stand in it. Every place and subject in my work is real and photographed by me, but the version you're looking at is the one I remember. If a picture of mine makes someone care a little more about a wild place they'll likely never stand in, that's the whole job.
I'm self-taught. Born and raised in southern Ohio, I now live in Northwest Arkansas with my wife Megan and our two dogs and two cats. Megan and I run this between the two of us — there's no gallery and no staff behind us, so when you write in, you're writing to the people who will pack the box.
Thank you for taking the time to look at the work. If something here catches you — or you just want to talk through a wall, or about photography — I'd genuinely like to hear from you.
To me the motif itself is an insignificant factor; what I want to reproduce is what lies between the motif and me.
— Claude Monet