A photographer who prefers waiting.
I make quiet pictures of people and places, slowly, for clients who would rather be looked at honestly than flatteringly.
I grew up in a house with one camera and a drawer of contact sheets. I studied photography in the evenings while working at a regional newspaper, and spent a decade making pictures against a deadline before I understood that the ones I kept were the ones nobody had asked for.
Since 2019 I have worked on my own from a studio above a bookbinder on Salt Row. I take on about twenty-two weddings a year, a handful of editorial commissions and a few brand days, and I keep the rest of the calendar free for personal work.
I shoot on film and digital, almost always in available light, and I stay as far from the people I photograph as the lens allows. Nobody has ever told me they wished I had been closer.
How I work
- Look before lifting the cameraThe first twenty minutes of any shoot are for walking around, talking and noticing where the light is. I take almost no pictures during that time.
- Stay a field awayThe longer the lens, the more people forget it. I would rather lose a little sharpness than gain a pose.
- Give people something to doNobody can stand still and look natural. Walk, carry, read, open a window. The picture is what happens in between.
- Edit like a ruthless friendYou will get fewer pictures than you expect and look at each of them longer. Everything else is cut.
What I carry
Light, mostly. Everything fits in one bag, and most of it is old.
- 35mm rangefinder with 35mm f/2 and 50mm f/1.4 lenses
- Medium-format 6x7 SLR with 90mm f/3.5
- Two full-frame mirrorless bodies
- 24mm f/3.5, 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.8, 135mm f/2
- One small reflector, one battery light for emergencies
- Pigment printer on cotton rag paper
Clients and commissions
Fernhill Roasters, Oak & Ember Ceramics, Pale Hour, Halvard & Sons Tailoring, The Tidewater Inn, Northlight Journal, Brindle Books, Saltmarsh Bakery.
- Concrete Season, an eight-page fashion story for Pale Hour.
- Fernhill Mornings: four rolls of 35mm over a single shift, now on the shop door.
- First solo exhibition of Quiet Hours, at a bookbinder on Salt Row.
- Left the newspaper. Opened the studio.