Blog
Some shots of the newly completed Ransom District Library in Plainwell by TowerPinkster Architects!
Smart, simple design in South Haven by Kristine Kay Interiors—I wouldn’t expect anything less from them!
Pretty thrilled to have my photo on the cover of American Farmhouse Style! I’ve done a couple cover images prior with Grand Rapids Magazine, but this is the first time for me on a national magazine. The cover story features the home of Carey Johnson (@careyscountrygarden on Instagram). I shot this in LeRoy, Michigan, in May 2020 and didn’t know I got the cover until late February this year when I received a surprise yellow envelope in the mail. Since it’d been so long since the shoot, I forgot to even be expecting this issue. So my heart really skipped a beat when I saw what it was and that my shot was chosen for the cover! The editor mentioned this particular shot might be a good cover option, so I made sure to put some extra time on site making sure things were framed and staged just right. It was worth it!
Shoots with Kristine Kay Interiors are always a breeze—great shots are just ripe for the picking!
When Kelle Contine Interior Design asked me to fly south to Columbia, South Carolina, in the dead of January to photograph their student housing project, The Rowan, it was a no-brainer for me! In fact, the last time I flew was in 2019 to the same city to photograph another one of their projects there. It was kind of a nightmare logistically. Somehow, a checked bag of mine got held up, and I missed a connecting flight. So I ended up snagging a way overpriced rental car and sped from Charlotte, NC, all the way down to Columbia to complete my journey. A shoot is stressful enough, let alone when it’s preceded by hours of unexpected travel chaos. It’s one of those incidents in life you look back on and feel so bad for your poor former self! Anyway, I somehow made it to the shoot and eked out a halfway decent photo shoot in the end. Now when this year’s photo shoot came up, it was my chance to do it right. I flew in the day before so that any potential snafus had plenty of time to get ironed out. Thankfully, I had none, and I was able to be extra fresh for the photo shoot and redeem myself!
I can happily call a photo shoot a success if I eke out at least one shot I deem good enough to add to my website. Otherwise, I leave the shoot a tad unfulfilled. Luckily, I found that portfolio-worthy shot at this shoot last month with Kristine Kay Interiors in West Olive—thanks to Kristine and her team’s staging skills that turned an empty slate of brand-new construction into a tastefully lived-in home for the day!
Here’s a really fun shoot I did with Suburban Inns of CityFlats Hotel in Holland! I’ve always been a huge fan of this boutique hotel and was excited to have the opportunity to photograph it. (There’s also a Grand Rapids and Port Huron location.) Each guest room has a unique layout and design which is a nice departure from the usual hotel experience where every room is the same ol’ thing!
As I progress as a photographer, I always strive to make my shoots as stress-free as possible, mainly by arranging as much time as possible to be available for me to shoot. Interior photography—especially hotel photography—gets so tedious, and my brain is fried after a whole day of shooting, especially if I’m trying to cram a lot of shots into a day. For this project, I allotted 3 separate days to get everything done. (I delivered about 50 shots in total.) I definitely couldn’t have done that amount squeezed all into one day and get the same quality result.
A few favorites from a shoot I did back in the fall with Jennifer Butler Design—featuring dogs!
I photographed the addition and renovations of Grand Rapids Community College’s Applied Technology Center for the builder, Triangle Associates, and architect firm, Fishbeck! We took advantage of the school’s winter break to photograph when there were no students to interfere with.
This was my very last shoot of the turbulent year that was 2020. Back in April when I was quarantining at my parents’ back home, I was prepared for my business—and industry for that matter—to become largely irrelevant to clients. I figured the economic effects of the pandemic might push professional photography pretty far down on businesses’ priority list, but thankfully, things somehow got back on track for me as early as May, and work continues to be steady!
I had to keep quiet about this one for a whole year, but it was worth the wait! I took these photos for Cottages and Bungalows magazine back in December 2019 at Tracy VanVolkinburg’s (@plaids.and.poppies) very merry, Christmassy home in Dorr, Michigan—feels like it was just yesterday!
