Born in Fort Worth and raised in the Mid-Cities, Millsap, and Cool, Texas, I have been intrigued by stories and storytelling as long as I can remember, especially via the mediums of the written word and photography.

I took on the challenge of writing my own stories as a child, but didn’t take it seriously until one day my Uncle Bill brought me a box full of old paperbacks. Most of them were Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard. He told me how Howard lived in a small rural town like Millsap, and if he could look out at the pastures of Cross Plains and come up with stories that would see publication and find readers around the world for generations, there’s no reason I couldn’t do the same. Sure, I’m not some famous author, but that afternoon flipped a switch that changed my attitude from mere admiration of successful writers to ambition.

My love of photography began with a stack of National Geographic magazines I inherited from my grandfather. Growing up a bored kid in a country town gave me plenty of time to flip through those magazines, studying the photographs and dreaming of the world far away. In high school, as pressure came from all angles about what I was going to do with my life, I relied on my old default, sarcasm, to swat those inquiries away. My favorite answer was to be a gigolo or a fighter pilot, which elicited the desired response: rolled eyes and dismissal. One of my sarcastic replies was “photographer for National Geographic”. My mother, however, didn’t roll her eyes. She gave me a dime store Kodak for my 17th birthday. I carried that thing with me everywhere taking candid shots of my friends as well as attempts at landscape and nature photography, trying to imitate those images from National Geographic, and never stopped.

Today I’m a father and husband living in the Fort Worth suburbs. I still write. I self published a novella, had a short story published in an anthology, wrote a short script that became a short film, and have a healthy stack of rejection letters. I’m also still a photographer. Now a professional one.

The equipment is more sophisticated, and what once were hobbies have been refined into skills, but the goal remains the same: to create something memorable, something beautiful. Something that stirs an emotion, that makes you think.

To tell a good story.