How I Got Here

Elementary School

I made a ceramic box. I carved a monkey on top and used glaze with popping colors.

I drew the mouse from the cover of Ralph S. Mouse over and over.

I wrote a story about a woman stealing a cat statue from a museum.

I did craft after craft with my mom and grandma.

I made a purple scaled house with balsa wood for a class project, outfitted to the max to Fashion Polly’s liking.

Middle School

My family took a trip to the Smokey Mountains, I brought my mom’s 1980s film camera with 2 rolls of film and filled up the rolls.

I made a teepee with fabric for history class, with foam and dowel rods. I painted the outside and put a Barbie fire place inside.

High School

I made a foam model of the flu virus for science class, and obsessed over the scientific drawings we copied from textbooks.

I made photos using toys, paper cutouts and play doh for an English project.

I took a film photography class with a teacher who loved mini robots.

I took a digital photography class.

I chose photography as my college major.

College

Every project I did more to put my hand into the photos I made. Making and staging to make the photos feel more me.

I created photos for a narrative assignment using n scale train miniatures. I sat everything up on my apartment bathroom counter and reverse mounted my camera lens. My professor for that class was very supportive and I’d finally found a way to make the photos I envisioned.

Every assignment I could fit miniatures into, I did.

And then I graduated.

After Graduation

I worked in administration at my university and photographed numerous events for them. I photographed miniature set up scenes in my off time.

Three years later I got a job as a product photographer for a marketing company.

Three years after that I got a WWE based toy photography commission, and later I got work as a photographer at a toy company.

All the while, toy pictures after work and on weekends.

And that’s the part that will always stay. Painting, building, gluing, finding, pouring, all for the end result of staged photos with toys.