2013

(The year in which everything changed)

Lifestyle, fashion, corporate headshot, and wedding photography. Proposal and wedding films. Retail work and 30’ canoes and the longest free-flowing river in the United States. The ebb and flow of 2013 marked one of my most dynamic years, yet.

It’s a good thing, too, because if life were still this varied, I don’t know that I could keep my head on straight.

Central Park Proposal

📍New York, New York

26 Mar | 🎥 Runtime: 5min

Patagonia happened when things weren’t going as “successfully” as planned; when the uncertainty around freelancing and the lack of consistent work started to weigh heavily. I returned to this company after a brief stint in 2009 in California, because vulnerability (in this moment) forced me back. tocomfortable.

To be sure, some of my most creative ideas and most fortunate encounters (meeting my future wife) happened while daydreaming and spending time on the sales floor of that retail storefront.

The role of being a Retail Visual Merchandiser brought a new perspective on storytelling in the physical world, and the prospects of working for this company-at-large inspired me towards their burgeoning provisions and line of food business, or their introduction of a fly-fishing rod for a wider audience.

2013 was also the year in which I found the most clarity and personal achievement in the art of songwriting. Four songs took shape or flight that year, and were my venue for personal storytelling.

Rivergator: Greenville to Vicksburg

🎥 Runtime: 6min 15sec

After the Laos Wedding, the Central Park Proposal, and the Maine Wedding, Chris Staudinger had seen enough: he and his then-boss John Ruskey of the Quapaw Canoe Company, inquired to see if I might make a “wedding film about the Mississippi River.”

So, in. the fall of 2013, I spent a week paddling on a canoe expedition along America’s longest free-flowing river between Greenville, Mississippi and the Port of Vicksburg, Mississippi. I was the documentary filmmaker instructed to highlight the magic and the mystery and the many beauties that form a portrait of the Mississippi River.

Once I stepped over that Delta levee, it is clear that my eyes became open to a new world–and from this point on, I would never be able to look away.