Bio

I was born in the country. Nebraska is country, right? Everyone thinks so; but my childhood was more city in the middle of country, corn and cattle around the capital of a state in love with the color Red. Cornhusker Red, University of Nebraska Red. The 90s were good years for the color Red, and after three national championships, the stadium has sold out their last (1231241232 something) home games. Even a girl like me, whose alma mater is a sometimes-rival, wouldn’t be found wearing black and gold on Nebraska-Mizzou game days.

Even a girl like me, though, dreams bigger than Memorial Stadium’s tailgates. This is why:

My parents worked in journalism, the kind of journalism that happens in newsrooms next door to their printing presses. Take your daughter to work day meant smelling the newsprint and meeting the cartoon illustrators.

In 1992, my mother’s cancer won. A few years after, my Dad left the Lincoln Journal-Star. Taking the buy-out, he left the paper and transformed our living room with backdrops and light stands. Suddenly I was his go-to wedding day assistant. I was 16 and bored with checking off the shot list, luckily  he handed me a camera. I looked through the viewfinder, and snap — captured a bridesmaid mid-move. Later that week, Dad showed me how to develop, how to coax the light and shadows, till like magic, her expression was once more before me.

I fell in love with the magic of freezing time. A lifelong journalizer, photography was a natural transition. It allowed me to bottle up and store the people, the light, the moments around me. Journalism is really just the enabling of honesty, the ability to let your subjects forget about the three pounds of black plastic and glass you’re pointing at them. It’s lightning bugs in a jar.

For me, it then became, where do you find the lightning bugs?

First it was Columbia, Missouri, where my alma mater taught me technique. New York for awhile, to learn from my mentors Joachim Ladefoged, Ron Haviv, Alexander Boulat. Omaha’s World Herald came next, where I put it all in practice, then back to Missouri for a diploma.

After the diploma was SE Asia, where lightning bugs flourished, literally dotting the rice paddies at night.

Now, it’s Chicago, to the lifelong business of capturing those lightning bug moments.