California Bay Area based illustrator and photographer specializing in book illustration, portraiture, documentary and travel photography and nature fine art photograpy.
I wanted to create a site that would incorporate both my artistic endeavors: illustration and photography. Aperture & Paint was born. Aptly title to represent both. While Facebook and Flickr where fine, I wanted more control over how I wanted my work to be displayed.
ILLUSTRATION
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PHOTOGRAPHY
IN THE BEGINNING I didn't really have a photographer's natural outgoing disposition. Most of my early work consisted of photos from family vacations. It was before the days of social media and the photos remained on my hard drive tucked away and forgotten, never seeing the light of day.
When a friend from work finally got me onto Facebook (back in 2014? Thanks Leann) I suddenly found myself with a platform to share my work. Slowly I became more prolific. Whenever I needed a mental break from my art or writing I often found myself going into the backyard or looking around the house to see if I could find anything interesting to take a picture of. What was suppose to be a 15 minute break often turned into a much longer endeavor.
About a year later I had gained enough confidence to post my work beside other photographer's work on Flickr. After that things really took off and I was hooked. Instead of
Photography is my creative outlet to my creative outlet. Sounds strange I know. With my art I'm my harshest critic. I'm never truly satisfied with my work. While this pushes me to better myself, it leads to many highs and lows.
With photography I have a much more casual approach. I take what I get. If a photo turns out, great, if it doesn't I move onto the next one. As I ..I'm constantly toeing the line between being critical and enjoying it for what it is. When taking up anything new, there's always a grace period where when something turns out it's a pleasant surprise before you begin to expect something to turn out well.
In 2014 I got my first taste of the Fujifilm shooting experience with the X30. Though the X30 was classified as a point and shoot, with its traditional dSLR like handling and the EVF it hardly handled like one. I was in love. Soon after I made the plunge and switched from my modest Nikon d5100 for a Fuji XT1. I haven't looked back since.