My journey as a photography artist began, funnily enough, as a new year’s resolution. I was feeling unfulfilled in life and decided to commit to spending a year learning photography and Photoshop while creating one piece of artwork a week. I started that year believing I had no creative ability and ended the year an award-winning artist. It still makes me laugh at the absurdity of it.

The inspiration for my images stems primarily from my parents reading me fairy tales. As a child, I was under the impression that adult life would be full of magic and adventures and was deeply disappointed to discover that wasn’t the case. So now I use Photoshop to add magic to every day because if I can’t find it in life, why not create it myself? But it’s also a way to pay my respects to the art I love, process the difficult experiences I’ve had and explore my deep connection with nature, animals and the magic that’s actually available everywhere when we learn how to notice it.

An artwork can take several hours to several weeks to edit depending on the complexity. But I love the process of creation so it never feels like work.

I never really understood why I create the works I do; it’s always been a fairly intuitive process. But just recently I was looking through my work again and could clearly see the story of a girl who felt trapped but, through discovering creativity, came alive in ways she’d never dreamed were possible. It’s not an exaggeration to say that photography saved me and so now I teach other people how to create this kind of art as a way to discover their own uniqueness and let it shine.

A high school teacher told me I wasn’t creative and it broke my heart because I loved art deeply. It was only when I discovered photography that I realized that wasn’t true. And so I became obsessed with creative photography to an unhealthy degree because it gave me a gift I never thought I could have. And so it’s my life’s work, it’s how I love to spend every minute of my day, and I’m devoted to showing other photographers through my artworks and my teachings that cameras are so much more than just a documentary tool. They’re a wonderful creative tool that offers limitless ways to explore and express your creativity (even if you don’t think you’re creative). I’ve never been good at doing what I’m told and I love to use my work to inspire others to follow their own path.

I now run an online photography school, Creative Photo Folk, where I teach Photoshop compositing and trick photography to help other photographers discover all the creative ways they can use their cameras. I believe that pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with photography is truly the key to creating original work that gets attention and sells while also having the most fun and rewarding time you’ll ever have with a camera.