About Andy

How it all Started

I grew up skateboarding, snowboarding and occasionally surfing. Photography played a HUGE role in those industries throughout the 90s and early 2000s and I worshipped the magazines that supported these sports.

The hours spent pouring over Snowboarder (does anyone remember the first SUPERPARK issue???), Skateboarding and Surfer left me raptured with the photographic process.

How did their photographers do this stuff? Their images were so amazing. I would tear them out and post ‘em to the wall and then try to emulate the tricks and people they featured. Usually badly.

I wasn’t very good at these sports, but the passion was there and the seed of interest in photography had been planted. 

Studying abroad for a semester in the United Arab Emirates was the excuse I needed to finally spend the money on a camera. It was a Nikon D40 with a kit lens. Nikon’s ubiquitous entry level starter set. The rest is history. 

There has been a camera in my hand ever since. It’s a shame I didn’t get into photography when I was still in school but the self taught journey has served me well. 

Initial Genres: on the streets and into music venues

My initial interests in photography evolved into street style photography (a troubled genre in the current climate of our digital lives) and photographing live music. Photographing music is where I really started to hone my skills. 

Music photography is difficult. Some stages, performers and lighting setups look great but you usually have a three song limit when photographing popular bands on great looking stages. 

That’s right; most music photographers can only photograph a band during the first three songs of their performance. Get in, get a good spot amongst the other photographers that are assigned to the show, get your photos and then get out. 

There are a lot of reasons for this, the biggest one being the performers aren’t a sweaty mess during the first three songs. It also gets us out of the way of the devotees that showed up hours earlier to get in the front row of the audience. Regardless, there isn’t a lot of time to figure out what to do and trouble shoot tricky lighting situations. Get in, get the shots, and get out. 

Lesser known bands playing on smaller stages give you all the time in the world but those lighting setups usually don’t look as good as the bigger stages, so you really gotta work to make sure everyone looks good. And that environment was where I really learned the craft.

The 930 Club, The Black Cat and The Velvet Lounge (my absolute favorite music venue of all time) were my homes away from home. At my peak I was photographing 3-4 hours PER WEEK while holding down a normal 9-5 day job. I did some great work back then, primarily for BrightestYoungThings, and their assignments expanded into event photography at prominent happenings throughout Washington, D.C. 

Taking the Plunge: Becoming a full time professional photographer

I developed some real client relationships and good working practices while moonlighting as an event photographer. I honed enough skills for my wife (then girlfriend) to encourage me to give it a go as a full time professional photographer. 

I learned early on that how you work with others is just as important as the images you create. The network of Washington, DC event producers, marketing agencies and fellow creatives I surrounded myself with made a great ecosystem of collaboration. Being a dependable and professional communicator, collaborator and supporter is integral to developing a consistent pipeline of new and repeat work.

My repertoire has since grown by solving a wider variety of problems for new and existing clients. I’m now based in Westerly, Rhode Island building a photography service that encompasses headshots, commercial portraiture, branding photography sessions and the occasional design and development of client websites. 

Other Interests: music, design and architecture

A number of other interests fuel and inform my creativity. I grew up playing the drums so I am always tapping on something or obsessing over a 20 second section of a song that I have already listened to a million times but never noticed that one little guitar part. That’s also probably why I photographed music. No better excuse to get into a show! 

I have also become obsessed with graphic design and web design. The ability to communicate thoughts with layouts and designs that help our brains understand things is a fascinating practice. Early to mid 20th Century graphics and ad design really gets my heart racing. This stuff worked and was rooted in techniques that have proven to last the test of time. 

Check out Aaron Draplin for someone who can wax poetic way better than I can about the nuts and bolts of good design that lasts far beyond its contemporary trends. 

Zooming Out: designing the world we live in

Design has also spilled into an interest in city planning and architecture since it all relates to how we layout and design the world around us. How and where do we live, work and recreate? What does it look like? Why? What materials do we use to build our dwellings and places of commerce? Who will build it all, and how?  

These questions eat at me day in and day out. I’m a Strong Towner to my core. 

Jane Jacobs (a main influence of Strong Towns) has probably had the biggest impact on me out of all the writers or thinkers or specialists or designers I have ever come across. Cities and the Wealth of Nations has completely altered how I look at every single aspect of the world and my place within it. She is my queen. I worship at her alter. 

But seriously, how we design our world is a core interest of mine. It’s also a prominent question of the 21st Century as we grapple with the long term impact and economic sustainability of 20th Century industries, materials, sources of energy and city planning techniques. 

Some say we need to build about three to seven million (!) dwellings in North America alone. How could we possibly meet such demand? (My thoughts; don’t expand, simply make it easier to fill in the gaps between what we already have) 

Architecture

What will those dwellings look like? Where will they be located in relation to each other and the places we work and purchase the stuff we need on a daily basis? Who is going to build them and what sort of materials will they be built out of? How are we going to keep them warm in the winter and cool in the summer? Architecture, in my opinion, is a direct way to have a hand in all of these factors. 

Potential answers to these questions consume my thoughts when I’m not thinking about my next client session or how to improve my business, and they have influenced what I photograph and my reasons for doing so. There is a chance that I will quit everything and become an architect. Who knows. Stranger things have happened!