Who have been your biggest influences?

I first fell in love with photography when I saw the work of Herb Ritts — I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know his name. His portraits of celebrities enraptured me. Like, wide-eyed, mouth-agape rapture. I’ve visually roamed his work (I have physical books of his images, and I also google him every now & again) literally thousands of times and I never tire of it. I still dream of being able to capture people the way he does — black & white film, timeless, often ironic, unabashedly intuitive, meaningful — while also having people use words like “fun” “genuine” “spontaneity” “trust” and “genius” in the same sentence as your name :).

My years assisting National Geographic photojournalist Paul Nicklen were incredibly formative on so.many.levels. Paul was the first person to make me truly consider everything that goes into being a full-time, for-real photographer. It’s easy to look at a single photo and assume, ‘I could do that.’ Realistically, though, to be consistently good, there are dozens of factors that help create quality photography (I touch on this topic briefly here).

Paul was also influential in helping me hone my professional future. Through him I learned I didn’t want to be a photojournalist, as I’d once thought. While I love telling stories through my images, I’d never want to give up the post-processing that, I think, gives my work a fine art touch, and photojournalist images (such as those featured in National Geographic or other prominent journalist publications) need to be published as-shot, as true-to-life as possible.

Lastly, with Paul, I got a taste of the Big Leagues without having earned a spot myself. I experienced a lifestyle full of people & events & places that 99.9% of photographers — 99.9% of the entire population! — never get to relish. I remember the first time I emailed with a Pulitzer Prize-winning colleague of Paul’s. AMAZING. Or when I watched Paul rehearse at TED2011 – before Bobby McFerrin but after the TED2011 Prize winner – and later went to an after-party that makes the Oscars look like a study group session. And those are just a couple examples. C r a z y, I tellya.

As far as finding inspiration, I think it behooves a photographer to roam the galleries of others, although I wrote about how hard it can be for me to look through other people’s work in this blog post.  That post also mentions Melissa Jill, a wedding photographer out of Phoenix, AZ, that unknowingly mentored me for about a year through her wildly informative blog. Her candid discussion of photography technicalities, gear, style, and business practices shaped the way I started in the industry, and I’m genuinely grateful to her for being so refreshingly honest about her work.

And, lastly, Zack Arias’ blog, which is now a tremendously successful book, reads like emails with an old friend. I simply cherish his advice and perspective, and his material is my only Must Read suggestion for new and experienced photographers alike.