My Story
Husband. Dad. Designer. Always making something.
Read on ↓
My Story
Read on ↓
There was never one moment I decided to be a photographer. I just kept finding reasons to pick up a camera. Travel, people, places, light. I loved that I could see something for a second and somehow keep it.
What kept me coming back wasn’t the photographs. It was the people. Someone lets me into their life for an afternoon, trusts me with something real, and we both walk away with proof it happened.
Moments don’t wait. A look. A shadow. The way someone carries herself when she forgets the camera is there.
Those moments disappear almost as quickly as they happen.
I photograph people because sometimes a fraction of a second can tell you more about someone than a hundred posed photographs ever could.
I’m not interested in perfection. I’m interested in presence, in the way a person actually inhabits a moment. So I chase what the environment gives us: light, movement, water, skin, shadows.
The camera is really just an introduction, a reason to meet someone I’d never otherwise cross paths with, and to earn enough trust that they hand me something real.
Nudity isn’t the point. The beach isn’t the point. Even the photograph isn’t really the point. The person is.
For a moment, I get to see someone exactly as she is, or maybe as she hasn’t seen herself before. And this time, the moment doesn’t disappear.
Photography has never been the easy part of my life. It has existed alongside a career, a family, and everything else that competes for time. There have been stretches where I barely picked up the camera, and moments I measured my work against people much further along than me.
But I always came back. At some point I realized the coming back was the answer. Becoming a father changed my relationship with time. You become painfully aware of how quickly life moves. This is the closest thing I’ve found to holding on.
People often ask me where the panda came from. The truth is it didn’t start with a panda. It started with people.
When I first photographed friends, they shared things they hadn’t said out loud often. The desire to feel confident, feminine, expressive. And the fear of criticism. So I brought masks into shoots, not to hide someone, but to remove the weight of being recognized.
The shift was immediate. Anonymity dissolved hesitation. People laughed, moved differently, breathed. It was never about nudity. It was about freedom.
Watching someone arrive guarded and leave standing taller.
Over time, the masks turned into one mask. The panda. It became a symbol of trust and freedom. And it’s personal. I’m mixed race, Black, European, and Chinese, and I’ve always been drawn to the balance of black and white, gentle and strong. The panda felt familiar.
CrzyPnda isn’t about hiding behind a mask. It’s about creating space where people feel safe enough to just be.
There’s no studio address. I work outside, wherever the light is doing something worth chasing, and the setting becomes part of the story. Now and then it’s a street or a hotel room after dark. Mostly, it’s one of these.
Miami
Haulover Beach, Crandon Park, Virginia Key. I go for sunrise, when the light comes in low across the water. Those three stretches of coast give me a lot of different looks.
Austin
Forests, wooded trails, and lakes. Different light from the coast, and the same pull toward being outside with nothing between us and the weather.
Beneath the surface
Under the water, light bends and movement slows down. We plan the location and depth together, around what you’re comfortable with. It’s an exploration we figure out together.
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