I was born in 1976 in the city of West Bend, Wisconsin. I attended Holy Angels Parish School from kindergarten through eighth grade. In fifth grade, we moved outside of the city of West Bend, which would later force me to attend Kewaskum High School rather than the West Bend schools. I graduated from Kewaskum High as valedictorian in 1994 with a perfect 4.0 grade point average. From there, I attended the University of Wisconsin - Platteville for the next five years. In 1999, I graduated with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a 3.3 GPA.

I took my first job after college at Woodward, Inc in Rockford, Illinois as a Design Engineer working on the development of fuel pumps for small airplanes. Unfortunately, the job and the city proved to be not to my liking and I left after only six months. I moved to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin for a job with ITW Engineered Fasteners as a Project Engineer designing plastic fasteners for the automotive industry. It wasn’t long before my duties began to expand into the Information Technology field as well. I began designing internal databases, writing small computer applications, and developing the company’s internal website in addition to my engineering tasks. After a year and half, I found that I was enjoying the IT work more than the Engineering tasks. I took advantage of the company’s tuition reimbursement program and began taking classes through the University of Phoenix Online working towards a B.S. in Information Technology. I finished this degree in about two and half years with a 3.4 GPA. Early in 2004, I moved from my Engineering position to an IT Specialist position within ITW. I still hold this position, but only for a little while longer.

In the summer of this year, I will be leaving my job at ITW and moving to Missoula, Montana for at least five months while attending the Rocky Mountain School of Photography. I will be following their Professional Studies program, which includes their Summer and Advanced Intensive classes as well as courses in Outdoor and Adventure Photography. I got into photography shortly after college when I bought my first SLR. It was a film-based SLR, however, so I didn’t really get too creative with it due to the cost of film and development. A couple of years later, I bought a digital point-and-shoot and started experimenting a bit more. Then, Canon released the Digital Rebel D300 SLR, the first digital SLR that was even close to my price range. I bought one as soon as the price dropped below $1000. I’ve been slowly improving my photography ever since.

In December of 2006, I traveled to Maui for a Mentor Series Photography Workshop. This was the first photography workshop I had ever gone to and was probably the first time I started thinking about the possibility of photography as a profession. My photos improved immensely in the year that followed the workshop as the techniques discussed there actually started to sink in and become standard practices. Six months after the workshop, I upgraded from the Canon Digital Rebel to the Canon 5D, a 12 mega-pixel full-frame SLR, that I shoot with today.

Besides photography, I have quite a few other interests. I seem to have a streak of curiosity running through me because I have constantly cycled through hobbies throughout my life. Some have stuck, others haven’t. I don’t know if I’m just looking for something that I can be really good at or if I just want to try everything at least once. Some hobbies that I love are: hiking, camping, travel of any kind, computer programming (ASP.NET, C#, javascript, HTML), weight training, running, water skiing, and playing volleyball. Some that I’m currently exploring for the first time: PHP programming, Flash/Flex programming, video editing and DVD authoring, and 3D computer modeling and animation. As for things I’ve tried but haven’t kept up with: playing guitar, ballroom dancing, wood carving, hunting, basketball, football, baseball, softball, soccer, water polo, downhill skiing, computer programming (Java, C++, Ruby on Rails), and snowmobiling (which ended very abruptly, but that’s another story). I’m sure there’s a lot I’ve missed, but you get the idea.

So there you have it! A little bit about me and five minutes of your life that you’ll never get back. Sorry…