I live in SLO County, and most of the prints in my shop were made playing in the sand at Avila Beach, CA. I never shoot from the exact same spot twice, so every morning looks a little different.
Wet knees, cold sand and a lot of early alarms. A few frames of me at work on the beach.
I've loved photography since I was a kid. I started with a Polaroid, then a film camera, and I'd drop my rolls off at the drugstore and fill photo albums with the prints. I took photo classes in high school and college, but I never wanted to shoot for clients. I wanted to shoot for me.
I earned a degree in Electrical & Computer Systems Engineering and have spent about 20 years running my web design company, Sleepless Interactive. Shortly after I turned 30, I bought my first professional camera, mostly to take pictures of my daughter Harper.
Sunset photos of the Central Coast were everywhere. Good sunrise photos were rare. So I started driving 30 minutes to Avila Beach to be on the sand 45 minutes before dawn. I've even lost camera gear to the ocean along the way.
In 2016 I was out almost every morning. A lot of the prints in the shop come from that run, and plenty of those mornings were fogged in and never got any color at all.
Photography has always been a family thing for us. Home is SLO County with my wife Nicolle and our kids, Harper, Ruby and Link. They come along on a lot of my Avila mornings, usually with their own cameras, and it's something we all enjoy together.
On foggy mornings when there's no sunrise, I swap from photographer to beach cleanup. I started the #KeepAvilaClean project to help keep Avila Beach clean after the busy weekends.
I picked up and threw away tons of trash myself, hosted cleanup days after the big weekends, and rewarded people I saw picking up trash on their own with prints, calendars and greeting cards of my photos.
For a while, photography turned into a lot more than taking photos. I was spending hours on social media posting, commenting, answering Avila questions and selling, and it wore on my mental health. Finding the time each day to get everything done got harder too.
Then Nicolle and I had our third kid, and Harper started school. The mornings I could make it to Avila slipped away, and then COVID hit. I probably could have kept going to the beach safely, but I stayed home and focused on family. I started Growing a Homestead and traded sunrises at the beach for sunrises in my garden. I never stopped taking photos. I just stopped sharing most of them.
I'm in a much better place now, physically and mentally, but I miss my mornings on the beach, just me and the first light of the day. So I'm getting back out about once a week. New mornings will show up in the Notebook and the shop as they happen.
I move around every time: under the pier, in the surf, out on the rocks. No two prints are the same view.
Each order is placed by hand with a professional photo lab, and I check the details before it goes to print.
Every print has its own maximum size, based on the camera it was shot on, so a big print stays sharp up close.
“Wonderful photography from a person that loves Avila Beach. He has captured multiple facets of a diamond called Avila Beach.”
I also photograph and film for people and businesses on the Central Coast.
When I'm not on the beach, I'm usually building something.
Fine art paper, canvas, metal or framed, made to order and shipped free in the US. Want something bigger or custom? Just ask.