London, with a Digital Rebel.
I bought my first real camera, a Canon Digital Rebel, right before a semester studying abroad in London. I’d always had the fascination and never the time. That semester gave me both.
I walked the city with it every chance I got, with no plan beyond the next corner. It was the first time I’d made something without studying for it first. The world got bigger, and the camera never went back in the drawer.
What the alarm is for.
Empty squares, soft light, nobody in the frame. Here’s how I get a busy piazza down to no one at all, and why it means being there before the city is.
Cityscape Photography Without People in the Frame
How I clear a busy square down to nobody in the frame, without faking it in post.
Medicine, and the habit of noticing.
I trained in emergency medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, then moved to California for a fellowship in emergency ultrasound at UC Davis. Today I work in the emergency department for Mayo Clinic Health System in Southwest Wisconsin.
At Mayo, a surgical mentor shared family photographs they’d made that were bolder and more deliberate than anything I’d seen. That was the moment I understood what a photograph can do when someone makes it on purpose.
Ultrasound taught me to hunt for the one angle where everything lines up. A master’s in Healthcare Systems Engineering from Lehigh taught me to plan for it. A sunrise gets the same treatment: where the light lands, when, and where I need to be standing.
Lviv, in uniform.
I serve as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Wisconsin Army National Guard, and I was deployed to Lviv, Ukraine. Two of the frames in my Cityscape print collection are from Lviv.
Twenty countries, with Alisha.
Alisha and I have been to twenty countries between us. Europe is the habit; the rest were good detours. She’s the other half of the portrait studio, too.
Photo by Fabio Mirulla, Florence.
The city I keep bringing people back to.
Five places to stand, what I carried, and what I’d leave in the hotel next time. The written guide has the map; the film has the light.
The résumé.
More of how the photographs get made.
Seventeen films so far: where I stood, what time it was, what was on the camera. New ones when there’s something worth showing.
Subscribe on YouTubeHere for portraits? Meet the studio →
London, with a Digital Rebel.
I bought my first real camera, a Canon Digital Rebel, right before a semester studying abroad in London. I’d always had the fascination and never the time. That semester gave me both.
I walked the city with it every chance I got, with no plan beyond the next corner. It was the first time I’d made something without studying for it first. The world got bigger, and the camera never went back in the drawer.
What the alarm is for.
Empty squares, soft light, nobody in the frame. Here’s how I get a busy piazza down to no one at all, and why it means being there before the city is.
Cityscape Photography Without People in the Frame
How I clear a busy square down to nobody in the frame, without faking it in post.
Medicine, and the habit of noticing.
I trained in emergency medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, then moved to California for a fellowship in emergency ultrasound at UC Davis. Today I work in the emergency department for Mayo Clinic Health System in Southwest Wisconsin.
At Mayo, a surgical mentor shared family photographs they’d made that were bolder and more deliberate than anything I’d seen. That was the moment I understood what a photograph can do when someone makes it on purpose.
Ultrasound taught me to hunt for the one angle where everything lines up. A master’s in Healthcare Systems Engineering from Lehigh taught me to plan for it. A sunrise gets the same treatment: where the light lands, when, and where I need to be standing.
Lviv, in uniform.
I serve as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Wisconsin Army National Guard, and I was deployed to Lviv, Ukraine. Two of the frames in my Cityscape print collection are from Lviv.
Twenty countries, with Alisha.
Alisha and I have been to twenty countries between us. Europe is the habit; the rest were good detours. She’s the other half of the portrait studio, too.
Photo by Fabio Mirulla, Florence.
The city I keep bringing people back to.
Five places to stand, what I carried, and what I’d leave in the hotel next time. The written guide has the map; the film has the light.
The résumé.
More of how the photographs get made.
Seventeen films so far: where I stood, what time it was, what was on the camera. New ones when there’s something worth showing.
Subscribe on YouTubeHere for portraits? Meet the studio →
A question
Ask me anything.
A place, a print, a lens, a collaboration. I read every one of these myself.
