Photography

The name Roaming Bison is to honor my tribal heritage (Cherokee and Delaware), and my love for roaming around with a camera.  I first picked up photography in the summer of 2002 as I interned in Washington D.C in a Native Studies program. I wanted to capture all the monuments and images I was coming across every day, so I bought a bicycle and a camera and saw the district through a lens all summer long. I shared those photos with my undergraduate art professors upon returning for the Fall semester of 2002. They helped me assemble a photography exhibit, which was a hit in the community and remained on display for a time. The photography exhibit was shown at a few other venues and some pieces were sold. This experience helped me land two jobs at once - as a photographer for the university’s student paper and with the public information office. Those positions quickly presented opportunities to become an editor of the student newspaper and eventually a photographer and sports editor for a local small town daily newspaper, while still in undergrad. I burnt out of photography and journalism by the time of my graduation in 2004, so I left the journalism world and photography all together. For Christmas 2015, nearly 11 years after putting the camera down, my wife bought me a new DSLR and encouraged me to pick up the hobby again. The hobby became an immediate obsession. Here is some of my work. I shoot with a strong preference for prime lenses. Keeping with my photojournalist beliefs, I make little to no alterations. On occasion I will make shadow or saturation adjustments, otherwise the images are unaltered.  Today I shoot mostly with a Leica Rangefinder.   The Leica M10-P and the Leica M Monochrome are my preferred cameras of choice.