| Portraits | Editorial | Documentary Weddings | Published Work | About John | Services | Contact | Home |
So much in life can be due to chance. My interest in photography goes back to a young grade school child rummaging through my grandmother's house and coming across a cardboard box containing an old film developing kit that once belonged to my dad.
I took my new treasure home and began to set up a makeshift darkroom in the basement. How exciting! I could capture a moment in time and recreate it myself with the magic of chemicals. Time frozen on film. Now I had a way to explore, capture and share all those things in life that filled me with wonder.
Soon enough I joined the photo clubs in junior high and high school. I actually was the photo club in high school! After high school graduation in 1986, I earned a photo internship at the Smithsonian Institution at the American History Building's Office of Printing and Photographic Services. I was staff photographer for various assignments as well as an assistant in both the photography of museum displays and studio work. It wasn't until this point that I made up my mind to do what I loved best. I scrapped a planned career in electrical engineering to pursue photography.
I then attended Marquette University where I earned a photojournalism major and a film minor. I served as the assistant photo editor and later the photo editor at the campus newspaper, The Marquette Tribune, as well as the photo editor for the campus yearbook, the Hilltop. While at Marquette, I was awarded the Kodak Professional Photography Scholarship, an award for having been selected as one of the best college students majoring in photography.
In 1989, I worked at The Door County Advocate, in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, where I was responsible for all photography for the Resorter Reporter, a weekly 22,000-circulation supplement in the largest twice-a-week newspaper in Wisconsin. I also wrote a weekly column. To my surprise, I'm still often recognized when visiting the Door peninsula!
Upon graduation in 1990, I had a photo internship at The Milwaukee Sentinel, where I was responsible for photographing daily assignments and substituting for staff photographers on vacation. One of my more dramatic assignments included Stevie Ray Vaughn's fatal helicopter crash in Alpine Valley. Photos of the crash were seen around the world via the Associated Press and People magazine.
Having begun to develop a large freelance client list, I decided to work for myself full-time providing a full range of photographic services to businesses and individuals both in and outside of Wisconsin. Clients include: Assurant Health, The New York Times, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Marcus Theaters, Baymont Inns, the Automobile Dealers Association of Mega Milwaukee (ADAMM), Parade Magazine, Quad Graphics, Miller Brewing, Brookfield Academy, Milwaukee Public Schools, Marquette University, and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee among others.
In 1998, I married my wife Susan who I indirectly met through photographing her Sister's wedding. My now brother-in-law, William Meyer, married to another of Sue's sisters, and then a photographer at The Milwaukee Sentinel, had recommended me as wedding photographer. Sue and I crossed paths 3 times before really meeting. First at the wedding, then at another job where I was unrecognizable in a beard, and finally at an antique shop in Milwaukee. After the third chance meeting we connected and the rest is history.
In this new age of digital image capture, technology is changing by the second. I feel a lot like an early photography pioneer, and am filled with the same excitement that originally steered me to photography when I found that film developing kit at my grandmother's house so long ago. Photography is ever changing, just like life.
Thanks for smiling!
| Portraits | Editorial | Documentary Weddings | Published Work | About John | Services | Contact | Home |