Time For Change

After five decades in professional photography, I’ve reached a fascinating season of life: the part where your knees make strange noises when you crouch for “just one more angle,” and airport security starts greeting you like an old war buddy because they’ve scanned your Pelican cases 437 times.

So yes… I’m easing toward retirement.

But before anybody panics and assumes I’m selling my cameras, buying twelve rocking chairs, and spending my afternoons yelling at squirrels, let me clarify something: Photographers never really retire. We just slowly migrate from “commercial deadlines and client revisions” to “sunrise landscapes, coffee, and telling younger photographers why shooting everything at f/1.2 may not solve all of life’s problems.”

For nearly 50 years, photography has been my career, my obsession, my passport, and occasionally my excuse for crawling through mud at 5:00 AM because “the light looked promising.” I started in portrait and wedding photography back when cameras weighed roughly the same as a washing machine.

Later, I shifted into commercial work—specializing in architecture, hospitality, food, product, and editorial photography. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with incredible clients, photographing beautiful hotels, amazing spaces, unforgettable people, and enough plates of gourmet food to permanently ruin drive-thru hamburgers for me.

But somewhere along the way, something changed. I began noticing that the images that stirred me most weren’t always the carefully lit commercial assignments.

Sometimes it was the quiet mountain road at sunrise. The ancient barn leaning slightly sideways like it had heard too much gossip. The fog drifting through the cypress trees at Lake Caddo. The strange little moments most people drive past without ever seeing. That’s where my heart has been pulling me.

So while I’m not “retiring” in the traditional sense, I am shifting gears. These days, my focus is moving more and more toward fine art photography, teaching, mentoring, training, speaking, and helping the next generation of photographers avoid at least a few of the mistakes I made over the last half century.

Trust me, I have enough mistakes stored up to create a full college curriculum. I want to spend more time creating meaningful artwork. More time traveling. More time teaching photographers how to truly see instead of just pressing buttons. More time helping creative people build careers that are sustainable, profitable, and authentic.

And honestly? That sounds pretty wonderful. Commercial photography gave me an amazing career and a lifetime of stories. Fine art and mentoring feel like the next chapter—the part where experience matters more than hustle, and where the goal shifts from simply creating images… to leaving something behind that actually inspires people.

So if you’ve followed my work over the years: thank you. And if you’re a young photographer trying to figure this crazy industry out, pull up a chair. I’ve got stories. Lots of stories. Some of them are even true.