ABOUT CHRIS

How It All Began…

My love of exploring the world began in an unexpected place: Gödöllő, Hungary, a rural town just outside Budapest.

After college, I moved there to teach English to elementary school children. I arrived at the end of the Cold War, at a remarkable moment in history. I watched Soviet tanks being loaded onto trains and hauled away as Hungary stepped out from behind the Iron Curtain. I was young, far from home, and suddenly living in the middle of history as it unfolded.

Whenever I had time off, I took a train or bus and went wherever the road led me. I explored Eastern Europe, learned its history, met its people, and became fascinated by their resilience and perseverance. Those years changed the way I saw the world—and I never stopped exploring.

Later, while raising my family and building a successful retail business, those memories stayed with me. I dreamed about faraway places, the stories waiting to be discovered, and the photographs I would someday take.

Eventually, those dreams became reality when I took a semester-long job in Croatia. I fell deeply in love with the country, its people, and its culture. I began documenting those experiences through writing and photography, and my travel blog grew from that desire to share the places and stories that moved me.

Over time, photography became more than a way to document where I had been. It became a way of seeing.

Today, I focus primarily on wildlife and landscape photography, creating fine-art images inspired by the natural world.

I’m drawn to places that feel wild, unexpected, or overlooked—and to the fleeting moments that can’t be recreated. Wildlife requires patience, persistence, research, and sometimes a willingness to travel down a road that most people would simply pass by. Landscapes require a different kind of patience: waiting for the right light, the right atmosphere, and the moment when all the elements come together.

But the photograph begins before I ever press the shutter. I always have the image in my mind before I make the photograph. I’m looking at light, color, composition, movement, and the relationship between the subject and its surroundings. I’m not simply trying to record what was in front of me. I’m looking for a way to interpret it—to create an image that conveys what I saw and, more importantly, what I felt.

That is what makes photography art to me.

Although my travels take me to places around the world, much of my work today is created in my home in Texas and my home away from home in Colorado. These two places offer remarkably different landscapes, but both continually give me something new to discover. From the rolling hills of the Texas Hill Country and the unexpected wildlife of Big Bend N.P. to the mountains, forests, and changing seasons of Colorado, I’m always searching for the next image.

I still travel with the same curiosity I had when I first boarded those trains in Eastern Europe. I still believe in saying no to the bucket list and traveling deeper—going beyond simply seeing a place and taking the time to experience it.