I’m continuing my series of still life studies of dead things. I’m fascinated by their beauty and feel it an honor to commemorate them by creating an image that will outlast their short time on earth.
Read MoreWhen is a Work of Art Finished and Other Creative Musings
I recently discovered a new love in the pressing and photographing of plants. I love the hunt for new specimens almost more than I love the challenge of interpreting their natural beauty in an image. It’s an exercise in slowing down and seeing the beauty in the quiet, unremarkable moments I so often take for granted. That said, plants are simultaneously the hardest and easiest subject to photograph in that they can’t collaborate with me to help me flesh out an abstract idea or mood I may have. Rather, they simply exist as they are and I can either figure out how to capture their beauty or not.
Read MoreUsing a Fungus-Filled Lens with Long Exposure and Prisms to Create Psychedelic In-Camera Effects
Whenever I’m doing a personal shoot I try to make at least one small change to a tried-and-true technique in an effort to see how the resulting images differ from previous sessions. For example, let’s say I’m shooting long exposures in a darkened room while my subject is wrapped in strands of LED lights and moving around the room. Each image is different based on their movement, which creates unique light trails. In the following shoot I might have the subject and camera stationary as I swing the strand of LEDs around the room, thus framing the subject in light. Another session might involve me moving my camera while the subject and lights are unmoving. Each tweak of the formula creates dramatically different results and I frequently discover new techniques through these experiments…
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Shoot with Fashion Photographer Gail Shamon
This was a fun, quick little shoot with fellow photographer and friend @gabrielleshamon. Gail did her own hair, makeup, and styling. I did three lighting setups, sticking to a red/yellow/blue color triad. I simply rotated out gels on my main, background, and rim lights for each set. This allowed me to have a broad range of looks that still felt related to each other, all in a short amount of time (I think we shot for about 45 minutes).
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Photo by Sean Quincy Munro
Owning My Scars
I was born with a condition called sagittal craniosynostosis. It basically means that part of my skull was prematurely fused and lacked the soft spot needed for head growth. It’s a fairly common defect but if it goes untreated it can cause deformity, seizures, or even death. Though I now know how lucky I was to be able to receive that surgery, I grew up ashamed of my scar. As many of you can likely identify with, anything that makes you stand out from other kids makes you a potential target to bullies. I was called so many names as a kid that I feared ever having my hair cut short…
Read MoreEvanescence: The Bitter Truth Photo Shoot
Back in November I drove down to Nashville to photograph @amylee for her upcoming @evanescenceofficial album, The Bitter Truth. I set up a makeshift studio in her dining room and knocked out a broad range of images for the album art, various magazine spreads, and images for streaming platforms…
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Playing with Bold Colors and Silhouettes
Collaboration with Sustainable Fashion Designer Malvar = Stewart
Celeste Malvar-Stewart is a fashion designer that specializes in using locally-sourced, sustainable materials in the garments she makes. I’ve collaborated with Celeste several times over the years and the thing that I especially love about our shoots is how open she is with the way I interpret her garments. She simply hands me a garment bag filled with delicate treasures and tells me to style and shoot them however I please. I am someone who thrives in situations like this— just improvising and figuring it out as I go. The more I plan ahead, the more anxious I get at all the possible points of failure. If you don’t have a concrete plan you can’t be held responsible if you deviate from it…
Read MoreThe Great American Road Trip
A couple weeks ago I booked a shoot in Los Angeles but given the extremely high numbers of covid cases I decided to avoid the airports and turn it into a road trip. Though I had made a similar cross-country trip twenty years ago with a friend, this time it was a solo trip through a country in lockdown. It was more than a little unnerving to stop off to fuel up at the only town within 50 miles only to find that every gas station, restaurant, and hotel is closed. I couldn’t help but think about books and films depicting a post-apocalyptic country where one could go days without human contact. That said, the beautiful diversity of landscape hit me especially hard; the mountains, deserts, and the kitsch making me more grateful than ever for this country…
Read MorePrint Sale
Print sale! I have a bunch of 8x10” prints that need a new home. $50 shipped (US only)…
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Self-Portrait at 40
It’s taken me 40 years to find myself. Here’s to 40 more.
Read MoreTraumatic Portraits: Integrating the Past and Present
I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember, and I’ve tried everything from medication to dietary changes to shake the issues. In 2017 my therapist suggested that I had survived an abusive childhood but I laughed it off, listing a number of pleasant memories as a counter argument. However, in the years that followed, the more I read about trauma and how the body writes that terror to our DNA, I began to accept the truth and reframe my history…
Read MoreDried Up and Dead to the World
I take regular walks with my children through the alleys of my neighborhood, and the other day I noticed the abundance of dead sunflowers lining the backyards. I was struck by the beauty in the gnarled stems and dried leaves— their beautiful decay. Autumn has long been a time that I shift my focus toward more somber themes, likely due to the colder days and longer nights…
Read MoreFractals: Photographing Time and Space
Though I’ve been exploring long exposures and shutter drag in my portrait photography for years now, I’ve recently began to explore it in a new way. For some time now I’ve implemented intentional movement into my shoots but I was always doing the moving— not my subject. I’d shoot at exposures longer than 1/30th of a second and I’d move my camera around as my subject sat there. I’d mix in a strobe light with a continuous light source so that at least part of the subject was sharp while the rest of the frame fell away to blurred movement. Lately, however, I’ve decided to ditch the strobe and fully embrace the blur…
Read MoreMy Travel Gear Kit
This is my travel kit. I’ve whittled down my gear over the years to get the leanest and meanest kit possible. With this two camera, two lens, two light setup I can easily travel and solo shoot, creating a broad range of indoor and outdoor scenarios.
Read MoreMy Photography Studio: From Basement to Loft
This is my studio. Not even 5 years ago my studio was in my basement. The ceiling was just under 7ft and the foundation leaked every time it rained. My lighting kit was little more than a couple battery-powered flashes and a desk lamp. Though I only had a tiny space and limited gear, it was my space. I learned to use every inch of that studio and gear…
Read MoreWilted Flowers, Crumpled Leaves, and Other Pretty Dead Things
We had a bouquet of flowers on our dining room table for the last two weeks, and it had been dead for easily half that time. When I finally got around to tossing the dead flowers I caught myself and decided instead to bring them to my studio to photograph. Though I’ve been photographing flowers and plants for years I’ve never thought to document them after their prime. I added in some dead leaves from one of our ailing house plants to round out my decay study. I enjoyed these studies so much that I may begin a new series around it.
Read MoreMaking My Own Alternative Camera (Pinhole)
Back in 2002 I was halfway through the BFA program in fine art photo at OSU and I’d just started a course called “alternative camera” taught by the great Ardine Nelson. The umbrella of “alt camera” encompassed everything from finding/modifying toy cameras to making your own cameras from scratch. The course awakened in me a drive to explore and push the boundaries in my artmaking and I really learned to lean into the element of chaos and the beauty of imperfection that accompanied exploration. I crafted a range of cameras during those three months. I made a LEGO pinhole camera that shot 4x5 film. I modified my grandmother’s broken stereoscopic 35mm film camera to shoot hazy, ethereal pinhole images. But my favorite camera ended up being one I made from an old cigarette tin…
Read MoreTim Hortons x Fruit Loops
A few weeks ago I shot a range of social media images for Tim Hortons’ recent crossover with Fruit Loops. When it came to the visual approach I wanted to mimic old print ads from the 50s and 60s, which translates to hard light and shifted color hues. I think it gives the images an elevated look.
Read MoreEphemera: A Collaboration with Hana Mendel and Celeste Malvar-Stewart
Last week I collaborated with Hana Mendel (an amazing photographer, illustrator, guitarist, etc) and clothing designer Celeste Malvar-Stewart. In an effort to maintain social distance guidelines, Celeste dropped off her garments, giving us permission to style and shoot them as we saw fit. Hana showed up ready to shoot and I kept my distance, wearing a mask the whole time. Save for the addition of wearing a mask, the shoot wasn’t any different from my other personal shoots— I always work with a minimal or non-existent crew…
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