I started my photography career in Colorado as a landscape shooter. Setting up a tripod in the dark, watching the first light creep across a ridgeline, and waiting for the sun to burn through the horizon — that was where I first learned patience behind the lens.
Most of my work today focuses on people, grit, and legacy. Cowboys, ranch hands, Western towns — the human side of the West. But nearly all of it is built on the setting. The backdrop is always a landscape. It shapes the story before I even press the shutter.
This week in Crested Butte, I returned to those beginnings. Mount Crested Butte stood over the valley like it has for centuries, and the lake at its base mirrored every detail — mist, fire, and stone. For a moment, the mountain wasn’t just scenery. It was the whole story.
The Western Lensman has always been about archiving the American West as it lives today — not nostalgia, not a faded version of what was, but the real and present landscape of work, heritage, and wild places. Sometimes that means a weathered truck or a ranch hand at dawn. And sometimes it means standing at the edge of a lake, watching a mountain breathe.