I AM FASCINATED BY HOW PEOPLE LIVE, HOW THEY MAKE CHOICES. TELL ME YOUR STORY.   

AT MY CORE, I AM A STORYTELLER.

I’ve been writing stories since I was a kid, perhaps thinking that telling other people’s real or imagined story would help me make sense of my own. I fell in love with photography because it allowed me to tell stories in a different way.  The visual power of story is something so vivid, something that you could even just glance at and it would stick with you. There are certain images that are so raw and so real that they not only capture a moment in time, but they define it.  A photograph isn’t a memory. A photograph says “this is real; this really happened”. 

Growing up in one of the last isolated places in the American West, I was home-schooled and lived in the actual middle of nowhere.  It was an environment that really discouraged exploration and curiosity of any other way of life. That left a lot of time for reading books, exploring alfalfa fields and irrigation canals, and dreaming about the life I’d have someday.  That future I kept dreaming about was heavily influenced by the National Geographic subscription that was delivered to my parents’ house every month.  The photos and the stories in that magazine allowed me to realize there was a whole big world out there, one I couldn’t quite see, taste, or touch just yet, but I knew it was possible and I wanted to be out in it. In the middle of it.  Of all the places and the people. Breathing in the scent of another place and watching sunsets over rooftops I’d never see again.

I tell people that I honestly believe reading saved my life.  I’m not joking.  Reading helped me see a bigger world even before I could visit it, and it helped me to understand that there is an answer to everything, an equal and opposite reality to it all.  I want to share this sense of possibility and love of travel with other people in the hopes that the “stories” I tell will broaden their view as well. It’s often when we get out of our comfort zones that we learn the most about ourselves. Travel has expanded me as a person and I absolutely want everyone with the desire for the new and challenging to experience the individual growth AND fun that the world has to offer.

I want to inspire you to travel deeper, to learn the traveler’s mindset.

I don’t just want to tell you where to go, what to eat, and where the cool kids hang out.  I want to inspire you to travel deeper, to learn the traveler’s mindset. I want to show you great experiences I’ve had, and suggest you can do the same. But more importantly, I want to show you how to explore places and activities that are meaningful to you. How to meet your own friends “on the road” and how to get lost so you can find yourself over and over again. I am a travel enthusiast, not a travel “influencer”. My dream is to share how I learned to be a traveler, and not just a tourist. Whether that means exploring your own city or getting on a plane to the other side of the world.