BIOGRAPHY
When I was ten years old, I won a photo competition. It was at a small town summer fair, so there was some real competition and I did win a bit of money. But what I really won was my life as a visual artist.
My mother is a photographer, my grandmother a painter; I grew up with cameras in my hand, so perhaps there was no escape.
As a kid, I was obsessed with hockey jerseys and designed hundreds of them just for fun. At hockey games, I loved watching the opening videos on the jumbotron and knew I wanted to do that someday, make those videos, and I do. In high school, I became obsessed with music: the marriage of audio with visual, the beauty of guitars as works of art in themselves, the music they make and the stories they tell.
I never stopped playing with cameras, still and video, seeing what they could do, what I could do, experimenting, creating, discovering what was possible, what people reacted to.
All of these obsessions, photography, videography, graphics, design, music came together in SAIT’s Media Production and Design program. It was always about the work for me, about finding a way to turn an idea into a visual reality, to do that with thought and purpose, to communicate that idea effectively, to tell a story people wanted to see.
Since 2007 I’ve made my living doing this work. I love that I get to do it for a huge variety of clients, from oil & gas to agriculture to sports to financial services to rodeo to corporate services to music videos. I love that I get to use the full media spectrum – video, photography, motion graphics and design – to turn ideas into reality. And I love the collaborative process, the exchange of ideas and how, ultimately, it leads to the best result.
That’s what I mean when I say it’s about the work. Because getting to do this work is just amazing.