I accidentally fell in love with photography because of a bicycle. I would ride my bike into the Kansas and Missouri farmlands for entire days, sometimes a week at a time (the slang term for this insanity is “bikepacking”), and because I wanted to remember what I was seeing, I bought a camera and started learning how to document everything I found interesting. What I didn’t realize at the time is that this is a practice called a field study, or a photo essay. I’d unknowingly put together dozens of photo essays from my journeys.

After several years of this; I discovered the photography of William Eggleston, and I realized that what I was doing had been done before. As I flipped through William Eggleston's Guide, I instantly recognized one of his photos: the album cover from Transference by Spoon (one of my favorite albums of all time). So many of the pictures perfectly captured the images I had always seen in my head when I snapped a photograph. I connected deeply with Eggleston’s photography and explored all of his books, each one inspiring me to take even more photos..

Fred Herzog’s Modern Color inspired me even further, as this was the moment I realized that I was a street photographer like him. Well...not exactly like him. I created my own label: “rural street.” Guys like Eggleston and Herzog shot photos in cities like Memphis and New York, whereas I preferred to photograph the rural midwest, herds of cows, dirt roads, abandoned signs of life and the million and one strange things found just off the beaten path. 

It connected with me that I was documenting-- and had been for years --the seemingly boring, everyday things around me that I love, the things that catch my eye. That’s why I’m a photographer. I want to share that experience.

My influences include William Eggleston, Sam Abell, Fred Herzog, William Christenberry, Stephen Shore, plus other street photographers from the fifties, sixties and seventies who utilized classic film photography. My hope is that you’ll enjoy one of my photographs half as much as I enjoyed theirs.