A Little Backstory

I tried to kill myself eleven years ago. You know the story. If you don’t, I’ll save you from the tears. I tried to kill myself eleven years ago and my dog, Starbuck, saved me.

At the time, I was going through some pretty deep, emotional, mental health stuff. Over the last decade that “stuff” popped up several times. I turned to my career, my art, and my passion for what I do to take my mind off of it and overcome.

Here lately, particularly in the south of the United States of America, the value of what photographers and artists do has always been virtually non-existent. My clients, what few live here in the south, have the opposite view of this value and for that reason, we love our clients. They have given me the opportunity, again and again, to create something for their lives, their homes, and loved ones that has helped me, whether they knew it or not, overcome my own self hatred.

I’ve hated myself since I was old enough to understand the term. I think I was ten years old when I first learned that I was never going to be good enough, never going to be right. I was wrong, in every sense of the word.

Imagine, a ten year old boy hating himself so much that all he could think about was what a terrible person he is.

I never had professional portrait made. We had pictures for programs, etc. Never anything substantial. Never anything that truly represented me. That’s not really the fault of anyone in particular. It’s just an observation. I think the largest picture I ever saw of myself was a 5x7 – and yes, I hated that, too.

I hated my eyes, my nose, my hair, my face, my body, my voice; I even hated my thoughts.

Is it really so surprising that, at the age of twenty-five, I sat down in my living room with a gun in my hand?

There’s a lot of turmoil that was going on in my life; to this day, it haunts me, continuously. In recent days, I’ve learned to cope with it thanks to finally talking about it with someone. I actually started therapy back in March of this year. I highly recommend it.

A Little Hope

After my first time dealing with suicide, I refocused my life on my portrait work. I actually remember putting a model call out and having only one person respond. Brandy did amazing and let me just move lights around and do everything I could to work in the studio to find my style, to finally do the work that I liked doing. While those images were lost in the great hard drive crashes of 2019, 2023, and 2025, I’m forever grateful.

I began to do my own thing, learning Photoshop and learning it fast. Seriously fast. So fast that even those mentors that have helped me grow over the years have to ask how I get it done so fast. So fast that my attendees at workshops can’t keep up – I usually have to make videos afterward so that they can at least get something. I try to slow it down but it’s so natural for me, the way I work.

I learned it all on my own, having not taken a workshop until 2019, where I met Richard Sturdevant and he helped reign in my work to a more manageable and less chaotic workflow.

It was a while before I reflected back on that September night in 2015. I certainly thought about it a lot. Every single day. But I never really took a deep dive into what it would have meant until these last few years.

I never would have met some of the most talented people that I’ve met from around the world, from Australia to Iceland and here in the United States. I never would have added those labels to my name (Master Photographer, Master Artist, Photographic Craftsman, Certified Professional Photographer, Accredited Professional of Animal Imagery). I never would have stood in front of hundreds of people to teach. I never would have traveled to see this world – a world full of beauty and wonder, hidden from me all my life. I never would have traveled to Iceland and received the Best of Nation award, the Silver Medal, and never would have seen these beautiful places that I dreamt of for so long.

Personally, I never would have met my friends’ kids, been a part of a growing family with nieces and nephews, never would have discovered the joys of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (yes, we’re going there). I never would have met Ruth and Wesley Saucer.

There are so many things I would have missed out on and for years, those latter two mentioned names were the only people that ever knew about that night.

Portraits and You

Then, in the summer of 2022, something was given birth to the world as an open source for all to use.

Artificial Intelligence.

Before we dive into that, let’s talk about portraits.

When I make a portrait, the first thing I think of is what I see.

“Duh! That’s what it is!”

Let me be more clear.

When I make a portrait, the first thing I think of is what I, the photographer, the artist, see in regards to who that person is in my eyes. Sometimes, the first time I meet a high school senior or children in a family, is the day of the portrait session. It’s not ideal but it’s also been planned together with mom, dad, and myself (sometimes grandma or auntie).

When a high school senior is scheduled at my studio, they fill out a survey online that goes straight to me. In it, there are some personal questions, including this one:

“On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, rate your self-esteem.”

In the past seven years, only one person has ever rated themselves above a five.

When I make a portrait, the first thing I think of is what I, the photographer, experienced in my life. I translate that, as best I can, into the work that I provide.

“It’s just a picture.”

No, friends. It’s more than that. It’s a story.

When I photograph a family, I look for dynamics that define the family, whether they’re posing or playing. I avoided being in pictures with my family. I remember clearly running away or not cooperating because I was being forced to do something.

Photographers that were hired weren’t trying to relate to me. In fact, they were just treating the family like any other family, never making it personal. There was only ever one time that a photographer was brought for something like this and the entire experience was horrible.

I often reflect on that experience when I’m hired to photograph a family with kids that don’t want to be there and dads that don’t want anything to do with it. Yet, last year, I photographed a family where the dad said, “I wasn’t expecting this kind of experience. I actually enjoyed it.”

I often think and rethink my approach on this subject and typically find that such interaction just comes natural for me. It definitely wouldn’t have happened without ever experiencing that night, eleven years ago.

What would happen if someone in your life weren’t here tomorrow?

Would you have pictures of them, to remember them by?

Would you have memories made physical to spark the nostalgia?

Or, like myself with my Granny, would you have to constantly remind yourself of what they looked like so that your memories don’t fade their appearance in your mind?

The AI Sensation

“We have AI, now! We can make those pictures!”

This is the most foolish statement I’ve ever heard – and I hear it quite often.

AI cannot make a memory for you.

What it can do is amazing! Absolutely. A friend of mine down the street from my house recently used it to recolor old photographs of his father and mother (or grands, not sure). Amazing! Did it create a memory? No. It enabled him to see his flesh and blood in color, that’s all.

I’ve used it to bring my storied characters to life. Writing is another way I push through all the darkness in my life. These characters mean the world to me, like the children I’ll never have. Beyond that, I do all the art that you see. I don’t use real people, real faces. These are the characters I dreamed of, down to every little bump in their skin. Freaking awesome!

But my hometown community, Monroeville, Alabama, has begun to use it religiously, making coloring books, inventing scenes, making announcements, and recently (something I’ll deal with after the elections in November) I’ve noticed my work (headshots/family) being used in AI-generated content, a very big no-no, legally.

Photographs are powerful, friends. More powerful than AI can ever be, despite the recent hacking events.

My photographs aren’t just pictures. They're triggers. Triggers for stories.

Who was there?

How old were you?

Your dad wore that?

That was before she went to college.

That’s before mom lost her hair during chemo.

That was when dad could still remember who I was.

That was before my son went to war and didn’t come home.

An AI family portrait may depict a moment that never actually occurred. That hug wasn’t real. That expression wasn’t real. You didn’t own those clothes.

Do you want your family archive, what your descendants will see, to document your family or generate one? Because, in seventy years when your great grandkids are looking through old pictures, are they going to see you or a computer’s ideal version of you?

Do you want people to think you grew up in the 80s with the current stupid AI trend?

I’ve noticed a lot of back and forth about AI. You don’t want AI to track you, to know you, to use your pictures…yet you have no quarrel with uploading your pictures to an Artificial Intelligence that is most certainly using you to learn to create a picture that never actually existed?

Closing Thoughts

We’ve spent years telling people they matter.

We tell people how much they belong.

We say, “This world needs you in it,” or, “This world is brighter with you in it.”

Then we turn around and generate something that has smoother skin, smaller waists, different hair styles (guilty), a younger face, stronger jaw, better body, and basically a version of them that was never real…all while telling them they’re perfect just the way they are.

No wonder the suicide rate was nearly fifty-thousand in 2024.

If this were 2015, there’s not a whole lot of encouragement to tell me not to pull that trigger.

Let’s not get into the issue of uploading your children to an AI generator.

One of the first trends of AI image generation was child pornography.

Congratulations if you upload your kids to create some cutesy pictures – you fed an Artificial Intelligence what it needed to create child porn.

It’s time we go back to where we were just a couple of decades ago, when imagery meant something.

Photographs have a job that synthetic imagery cannot perform. They’re documentation, testimony, memory, identity, history, milestones, grief, legacy, and so much more. When the purpose of photography is remembering who someone actually was, authenticity isn’t an option.

Please, friends, exist in your family portraits.

Exist is the keyword.

Exist in this world.

Exist in these pictures.

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, there is help.

Call or Text 988 in the United States, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Visit AFSP.org

I’m sure there are more.

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We tell people they matter - then we ask AI to make them someone else

A Little Backstory

A Little Hope

Portraits and You

The AI Sensation

Closing Thoughts

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