Photographer
Vancouver, British Columbia
Portfolio
Q&A
Q: What song do you play on repeat?
A: Lately, "Drop The Guillotine" by Peach Pit. They're an awesome local Vancouver band, and I'm fully
obsessed with their music over the last couple of months.
Q: What's the best way to start the day?
A: Good coffee in the morning sunshine, somewhere in the mountains.
Q: What are you most looking forward to this year?
A: I've been slowly working away on a personal project over the last year and a bit. It's called Makers, and I'm really excited to put some new twists on it in the coming months.
Q: What is the most impactful project you've worked on and why.
A: I've been fortunate to work with a few awesome organizations over the years. I shot a campaign with The Ocean Cleanup last year, which was a really cool experience. My background is in the sciences, and I'd love to use that to spend more time working at the confluence of storytelling and science. There are so
many amazing people dedicating their lives to developing solutions to the problems our planet is facing,
and I think telling the stories of that work is important.
Q: Which art/photo exhibit that you've seen has impacted you the most?
A: Not really an exhibit in a traditional sense, but I've been really impacted by a film I saw (several times) a few months ago, Everything Everywhere All At Once. The insane and wild narrative of that film
completely shattered my view of what storytelling could be, and has had me asking questions about how
I can reach far beyond traditional storytelling in a similar way. I think I'd always viewed my sarcastic
humour and lightheartedness as a negative when it came to telling meaningful stories, and that film
changed that for me.
Q: What mystery do you wish you knew the answer to?
A: That's a tough one. I ask a lot of questions. Sometimes important ones, more often pretty dumb ones. A
couple I've been thinking about lately are things like "why do we all feel the need to create things?" and
"why do fish have tongues?" Seriously though, wtf does a fish need a tongue for?
Q: What are some things you had to unlearn?
A: When I was younger I always thought I was going to have a career in the sciences. With that expectation I fully embraced a technical way of life – I wrote robotically, I thought in black-and-white terms, and I tried to distill my creative process down to an equation. I saw myself as a technician rather than an artist. Unlearning all of that has been super challenging and incredibly freeing. I've worked hard to grasp the nuance of how we communicate with meaning, what it means to cultivate creativity and to understand that the majority of the problems in the world don't have binary, objective answers.
Q: What fictional place would you most like to go?
A: I think the world is far too crazy of a place to dream about traveling to somewhere fictional BUT if I have to choose one, I'd choose Madagascar, but not real Madagascar. The one with the singing lemurs.
Q: What book impacted you the most?
A: I really liked the 4-Hour Workweek. And The Atomic Habit. I read a lot of self helpy kinda stuff.
Q: What risks are worth taking?
A: When you take any risk, there are 2 potential outcomes: #1: You get what you want OR #2: You do not get what you want. If you ask yourself what the worst-case scenario for #2 is, and the answer includes you learning something valuable, then the risk is worth taking.
I'm a big advocate of taking risks, and you'll find me regularly encouraging friends to chase their dreams. We only get one shot at all of this, take risks and make it count.
Q: What are the first 3 chapters of your autobiography titled?
A: 1. A Nice Kid with a Bright Future
2. Turns out Partying at University is Actually Pretty Fun
3. Dropping Out of School to be an Artist
Q: What do you spend the most time thinking about?
A: I spend a ton of time thinking about weird little business opportunities. Always have. So much so that I
went back to school a couple of years ago and got a business degree from an awesome, sustainability
focused school in Victoria BC.
Q: Best and worst advice you've ever received.
A: Best Advice: Don't wait to do the things that fulfill you, assuming that you'll have the time and money to
do them later. Worst Advice: Don't pursue photography as a career because it's too stressful and risky.
Q: How has your work evolved over the past few years?
A: A few years back, I was almost exclusively shooting outdoor sports kind of stuff. Hiking, trail-running,
biking, and all that. But it felt largely unmeaningful. These days my work is much more story-driven, with a
lot of Branded Content projects on the go. That evolution is one that I'm really happy with.
Q: One thing you can't show up to a shoot without - Besides a camera ;)
A: Sour Patch Kids. Undoubtedly.