I Dumped My Successful Advertising Career For This And It’s Way Better

I’m a graphic artist and performance photographer in Nashville, TN and I worked in commercial marketing and advertising for over 20 years. I had a successful career, a nice fat portfolio and my projects included clients such as CNN, AT&T, What A Trip Entertainment: Country Music Awards, CMA Music Fest, Country Music Hall of Fame & The Academy of Country Music. It was fun and I worked for some really great businesses, but I don’t work for them anymore. You could say my heart has fallen for another… HA! I dumped my big business clients to work for the girl next door… Literally. I now focus all of my creative marketing and graphic design skills into creating detailed story images for traditional portrait clients.

What I create is referred to as conceptual photography. It’s a genre of photography that has been around for years, but typically you see it in fine art galleries or in advertising. i.e. movie posters, car ads etc…. It’s all about making images that tell a story about your client or product. I want to give my clients access to an art form, that up till now, has never really been offered to the traditional portrait client. I mean… Why should all the movie houses and big advertising have all the fun? Now you can have your very own movie poster telling your life story and you don’t need a 10K budget to do it!

I still create the same types of pieces I did for my advertising clients but instead of telling stories full of product placement and slogans, I have opened this art form up to my client’s life experiences, milestones, and dreams. Conceptual photography is about to hit mainstream in the photography service industry. I want to be spear-heading that stream. With a digital camera and some Photoshop I can create what big business clients and advertising had access to for years! My creative process for piecing these artworks together is exactly the same process as my advertising work. With the explosion of digital imaging technology, I think offering this art form to traditional portrait clients is long over the due. With today’s smartphones, we are an image-saturated society. Traditional portrait clients are looking for something more than just a digital photograph. They want something more personal. So why did I give up my advertising career to work for the girl next door? It’s about time… Don’t you think?

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