The Photographer
I spent ten years getting real performances out of nervous people. Then I picked up a camera.
Most people book a proposal photographer hoping the pictures turn out. What they are actually worried about is standing in front of a stranger with a camera and having no idea what to do with their face. I know exactly what to do about that, and it is the part of this job I was trained for long before I was a photographer.
The Unusual Path
I come from a family of working creatives. My father was a rock star. My mother makes jewelry and writes. My sister is a writer and a former pantomimist. Nobody in my house had a normal job, and it never occurred to me that I would either.
I spent more than ten years as a professional actor. Award-winning productions, touring work, commercials, film, one credit at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, a Jeff Award. I directed. I coached actors, which turned out to be the job that mattered most. Somewhere in there I also ran my own creative marketing agency.
Then nine years of fine art street photography, which trained a completely different muscle. Hunting frames in chaos. Learning to read light on instinct instead of thinking about it. Finding the frame nobody else in the crowd noticed was there.
Proposals need both at once, on a clock, with no rehearsal and no second take. That is why I do this work.
What Coaching Actors Taught Me
When an actor came to me stiff and stuck in their head, the first thing I took away was their idea of how the character should sound. That idea is wrong every single time, because it was built before they had felt a word of it. We would go line by line and I would ask what the words actually made them feel. Did a line conjure an image. Did something dark make them want to laugh, because it was darkly funny or because saying it out loud was unbearable. That laugh is the truth, and it is a hundred times more interesting than the version they arrived with.
A proposal is not a rehearsal room. You have one evening, no repetitions, and a person who does not know what is coming. So the exercises do not transfer. The diagnosis does. You arrive with an idea of how you are supposed to look, and that idea is the thing standing between you and a good photograph.
Your truth is more interesting than any face you think you are supposed to make.
So I do not tell you to relax. When someone gives me a tight closed-mouth smile, I get a slightly puzzled look on my face and ask, hey, do you ever actually smile with your mouth open? It works every time, because they laugh at the question, and the laugh is the photograph.
The other half of it is permission. I tell people to improvise. Try something. Be bold, crack your partner up, do the ridiculous sultry face on purpose if you want to. The best frames I have ever made were not planned by me. One woman spotted a field of dandelions on the walk back to the car and said "ooh, dandelions." We went and played in them. Those ended up being the pictures they loved most, and they only happened because she already knew she was allowed to point at something.
If You Are Camera-Shy
About half the people I photograph tell me some version of this before we start. They want beautiful pictures. They are just certain they do not photograph well, or they have sat through something awkward before and are bracing for it again.
You will not be asked to pose your way through the evening. You will be given things to do, most of them aimed at each other rather than at me, and the camera stops being the point somewhere in the first ten minutes.
The reviews that mean the most to me are the ones that start by admitting they were dreading it.
If You Arrive With a Vision
The other half show up with a plan, a mood board, and a location already picked. They do not need help relaxing. They need someone who can take what they brought and build something bigger out of it.
Most of the time the ingredients are already sitting there and nobody has noticed. Someone comes to me torn between two locations and leaves with an evening that uses both, in an order that builds. Someone asks about a spot across town without realizing that the place they already love is five feet from one of the best views in the city.
That is the part of this I would do for free. Take what you love, find the through-line, and shape a night around it.
The Background
Jeff Award Winner
Chicago theater's highest honor, from a decade of professional stage work before photography.
Steppenwolf Theatre Company
One acting credit at Chicago's most celebrated company, plus ten-plus years as a working actor, director and acting coach.
9 Years Street Photography
The fine art foundation underneath all of it. Reading light fast, in public, with no control over the scene.
300+ Proposals
Chicago rooftops, parks, boardwalks, beaches and living rooms. I have seen how these go wrong, which is why they mostly do not.
200+ Engagements
Parks, rooftops, the lakefront and the middle of a city street. Often the second session for a couple I photographed at the proposal.
250+ Weddings
Every venue, every kind of weather, every curveball a wedding day can produce.
151+ Five-Star Reviews
Best of Zola 2025 and 2026. WPJA Spotlight. Fearless Photographers.
Off the Clock
I live in the Chicago suburbs with my wife, two kids, and a high-maintenance Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Ziggy, after Bowie, obviously.
- Thai iced coffee is non-negotiable fuel
- Perpetually hunting Chicago's best Detroit-style pizza
- Butcher and the Burger has the best burgers in the city and I may die on this hill, unless you can change my mind
- I do a flawless Scooby-Doo laugh, ask me on your wedding day
- Caraway, anise and fennel seeds are my kryptonite
- "A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open."
Let's Build Your Night
A proposal you have been planning for months, an engagement session, or the wedding that follows. Tell me what you have in mind, or tell me you have no idea yet. Both are a fine place to start.
Start a Conversation151+ five-star reviews · 300+ proposals · Jeff Award Winner
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