Time spent exploring with beloved friends or on my own - visualized.

While not rare these days, I'm a passionate nature person. Over the last several years I've had the fortune of being able to explore the Nevada desert along with most of our surrounding states. Most of the time I was with dear friends and others on my own - searching for tranquility and a break from the day to day. At first, I simply went on hikes, never really taking any pictures. Over time, I slowly invested in camera equipment and started really developing a passion for capturing the beauty that's just outside our city limits. I never really did anything with the pictures I'd take, only simple edits and holding onto them for myself. For my future self to look back on one day.

Over the years

I found my creativity dwindling, or at least my drive to make truly passionate art.

During all this time I was deep into my graphic design career - hustling. I was fortunate to find a great job, an ad agency based in Las Vegas, that really threw me into the deep end (the good kind). I found myself working on creative jobs that I felt I shouldn't even be trusted on without several more years of experience. But there I was in the trenches learning, grinding. Looking back it was an amazing ride - but over the years I found myself being so busy and tired at the end of the day. I stopped making time for myself and my personal artistic style. It happens, life just gets to you but sometimes by the time we notice, we're more estray than we would've ever thought. Over time my creative work would suffer. During this time is when I started to really see how much I loved photography and layout design and 3 years ago I made the decision to start working on a visual book. A book that merges my personal photography with my love for layout design.

The book is still a work in progress and has NO DEADLINE. That's right, for so long I lived by the dreaded deadline and decided that this could be a lifelong project. Or just whenever the book gets too long and too expensive to print. Now whenever given the opportunity, I take my camera out and just shoot. Sometimes its pure trash and other times I've created my next 2-page spread. I found myself inspired again, and that ultimately only improved my professional career. I started to care again. I'm still a full-time graphic designer and still love creating creative solutions for my clients, whatever they may be. But now that I've truly understood the concept of making time for myself - I've found balance.

‍

The Kohta Circus - the inspiration behind Native

This 2-page spread is hands down my favorite to date. This was a random find for me, no idea what I was going to find that day. It started out with a simple camping trip in Gold Butte National Monument with 2 of my best friends and turned into the capture of this amazing 80ft+ long wall of ancient petroglyphs. In fact, it was this wall that inspired my brand name, Native. From this day on I found a strong intrigue into our native land's history.

After that weekend, I set out on many trips and spontaneous excursions that has contributed to additional pages in my book - and most importantly turned into additional knowledge for myself. Both in and out of my design career.