Falling in Love with the Work

2025 was the year my job became my passion, which is funny because I’ve been shooting for over a decade. Photographers are generally passionate about their work, and I had some passion as well, but always felt insecure and felt deep down I wasn’t good enough.

It was always the dream to be a full-time photographer, so when I made the switch to do it in 2021, I thought I would be living out my dream. Reality set in and I struggled for years with insecurity and anxiety all while trying to get better.

Being an entrepreneur unleashed an anxiousness more intense than any 9 to 5 job I ever had. There was no guaranteed paycheck…the quality of my work, the ability to book clients (and a whole lot of help from God) hopefully resulted in enough money to pay the mortgage.

And yet, despite all my stressing and worrying, I started 2025 reflecting on how we had made it this far and covered our costs one way or another each year. Life was pretty good! I figured maybe I could focus more on enjoying my work in the coming year and just focus on being an artist and obsessing over my craft. The biggest shock of all was ending 2025 more profitable than I ever dreamed I would be as a photographer.

Rediscovering and Loving the Light

I started the year trusting that it would all work out somehow, and decided to focus on the work and not our finances. I committed to live as an artist, encourage my own creativity, and dive into my craft.

I had always paid close attention to light, but this year I would obsess over it. New lighting modifiers, new lighting schemes for headshots, always searching for beautiful light in any scenario. Even when I wasn’t working I was just looking out for beautiful light in the world, thinking about possible photos to take…wondering how I could recreate it in my studio. I spent hours in the studio taking self-portraits and experimented with new light on paid work after getting my safe shots.

The more I obsessed over light, the more I fell in love with photography as art. Beautiful light lit a fire in me and that feeling became a helpful benchmark. As I worked through a shoot, chasing after better and better light, eventually I would feel this wave of excitement and know I was right over the target. My passion for light had become a driving impulse to be creative all the time.

It all works out, somehow

Throughout the year, more and more work came in, unexpected collaborations popped up. Businesses pursued me for their products (versus me begging them for the chance to shoot). Even though I had kind of left food behind a bit in 2024, I booked several high end food clients and fell back in love with that style of photography. There was hardly a slow month all year long and my family was still able to take most of July off for vacation.

Unexpectedly, doors opened for me to shoot more video. I’ve always felt less confident with video than I do in the hardest lighting situations in photography. Yet again I committed to pursuing it for the joy of doing the work, not anything else. Sure I wanted to produce a good product for my clients, but I knew that if I enjoyed what I was making, they would too.

And I pushed myself deeper, blending my photo work with my video work. I started shooting hybrid events and weddings, delivering full photo galleries alongside beautiful highlight video reels.

The year ended on a high note. I’m happy, and happy with my work, meaning I achieved what I set out to do this year. The business is profitable and growing, meaning more time to enjoy with my family and plenty of time for personal work and donating my time to nonprofits. 2025 will truly go down as a seminal year in my career.

Three (and a half) Takeaways from my Year as a Connecticut Photographer

For the photographers out there, here are some lessons I learned this year.

First, light is the key.

Its obvious and yet in the age of gear, AI, mirrorless this and opengate that…maybe we need to get back to basics.

Analyze images you think are beautiful; figure out how they were lit. Think about the camera settings, the light modifiers, what power your lights would need to be at, what is the light reflecting off. Break out your flash and put it to work creating new images. Ask friends to collaborate with you, shoot self-portraits, get uncomfortable on your own until you start taking photos that you love.

Second lesson is that while light, framing, settings, etc. make up a good chunk of the quality of your images, the edit will breathe new life into your images and take them to the next level.

I absolutely ::wracked:: my brain and spent so many hours editing and re-editing my work this year. I learned to do less, build contrast, and develop a look that made me feel a deep love for my own work versus trying to make it look how I think other people might want it to look. The lessons I learned shooting in the field were pretty balanced with all that I learned sitting for hours behind my laptop screen.

The final lesson was to look at yourself as a creative person.

Again, may not be a shocker for most photographers, but speaking for myself, I always looked at painters, musicians, etc. as the real artists and photography as a different, lesser kind of pseudo-art. I learned a lot from Steven Pressfield’s book “The War of Art” and from “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon. For me though, creativity feels more spiritual than you’ll get from either of those books.

I believe we are all made in God’s image and one of the first things we learn about God in the Bible is that he is a creator, the original creator…the creator of creativity itself. I believe we were given this creative spirit and it wants to express itself.

So I guess this lesson is two fold. Get to know the original Creator and then see yourself as a creator also.

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Thanks to my Bridgeport Creative Community

I want to take a moment to thank a few people who have supported, encouraged, hired, and collaborated with me this year. This is going to read like I won an Oscar, or my own eulogy, but I just want to say thanks!

First, thank you Cassie for all the help. From life at home, hearing my ramblings about photography, and help with all the bookkeeping, I couldn’t do it without you.

To Marcie of The Bananaland and Luke of Dogsname, you two were some of my earliest supporters, trusting me with photographing your clients at a high level. Thanks for continuing to partner with me this year.

Thank you to the whole crew at Park City Music Hall for the encouragement, to Doey Joey for the creative collaboration, to John Torres and my parents for trusting me to shoot this important space.

Special thanks to Gabby for the referrals for event photography.

Thanks to Neil Landino, Steve Walter, Meera Seetharaman, Al Pascarelli, Milas Shepherd, and Mia Selvaggio . Each of you is a special friend and colleague and this year would have been a lot different without you.