I didn’t set out to be a photographer. I set out to walk. To raise support for kids with cancer and maybe make some kind of sense of my life along the way. I hiked the Appalachian Trail, writing postcards to children—offering scraps of beauty, borrowed from the mountains, in the hope it might encourage them.

Truth is, they were more of an encouragement to me. The words didn’t always come easy. But there was someone helping me find them when I couldn't—someone I met hiking, who helped shape the messages, who reminded me why I was out there when I forgot. That someone is now my wife.

After the trail, when the dust settled but the questions hadn’t, I found myself in a Therapist's office a couple years later. They asked me something simple, yet terrifying: “If you could do anything—what would it be?” I said, “A photographer.”

I didn’t really know what that meant. I wasn’t trained. I didn’t have the gear. I just knew that something inside me lit up at the idea of capturing the way life feels.

Before long, burnt out in my budding sales career and having recently went through Covid my wife and I moved into a van and lived on the road for two years. That's when I bought my first real camera—not to build a business, but to not forget the memories we were making (see below).

Now I photograph others—people standing on the edge of their something sacred: a wedding, an elopement, a graduation, or perhaps a story suppressed.

Because I know what it means to wish you had something to hold on to.
I know what it means to try to make sense of where you’ve been.
And I believe photography—at its best—isn’t about perfection.
It’s about preserving the connection we all share.

If that’s what you’re looking for, I’d be honored to help tell your story.

Hey, I'm Zak

Let's tell your story.

Let's tell your story.