When I started photography, I just wanted to hang some landscape photos on my wall. I was living in California at the time and was taking photos of cars at a car lot for their website. It wasn't until I was 25 that I realized normal jobs just don't work for me; I didn't fit in to a scheduled lifestyle. So I quit my job and was going to use my savings to create my own portfolio. I actually used a Best Buy credit card to purchase a decent camera. I had seen other photographers work and figured it would be easy. I sucked at first. In fact I was awful. But it made me fall in love with the process and develop a truly unbalanced passion for photography. I was obsessed. Five years later I posted a photo on Facebook and someone wanted to buy it. I didn't think my art was good enough for anyone else to own, I just knew I loved it. After selling my first piece for $250 that was all the fuel I needed to dream bigger. Against my friends and family’s advice, I decided to use the very little money I had left and move to Las Vegas. I packed up my dog and everything I owned inside a Nissan Altima and set out with the dream of opening my own gallery on the strip. I wanted to see my name in big bright lights. I wanted to know what it felt like to have my art seen by everyone. And I'm not going to deny, I enjoyed it. I moved around a lot as a kid but spent most of my time growing up in Tucson, AZ. Vegas was a completely different world. Over time, my lifestyle spun out of control and I became very lost. Everything I wanted and dreamed of turned out to be someone else's dream. It wasn't mine. "Lost Vegas" is the image I took when I had this moment; I was in the biggest city I had ever lived in and I felt more alone and lost than ever. It's sometimes when we're at our highest points that we discover our lowest lows. They say never forget where you came from and even though I feel I am from so many different places this photo always reminds me that it doesn't matter where you came from but what you do with it when you get to where you are going. “Lost Vegas” will always be a piece in my portfolio that not only changed my mindset, but the trajectory of my entire life.
