Ti Creative

I have been told, on occasion, that you can’t get there from here. Which was always fine with me because I wasn’t so much trying to get there since there is where I started. I’m not sure anymore where I was headed but now I am here and I am thankful for every step of my journey.

I always like to tell people I broke my first camera when I was two. Actually it was my Dad’s Voigtlander and I heaved it to the floor. I dinged the focus ring so you could only get in so close after that. My real interested in photography kicked in in High School where I shot extensively and spent many hours breathing the mixed aromas of developer, fixer and stop bath. Remember that? Kids these days have no idea how good they have it! Or maybe not so much. With the technical requirements, came a discipline and a thought process that seems to have evaporated and has been replaced with instant gratification.

High School was also a time when I started enjoying writing programs on the teletype in the library. A few of us would spend our library time writing games of the sort where you were presented with action options and a randomizer would determine the evil enemy response to your action. No graphics. Just the written word and your imagination.

Continuing on into College at NCSU I majored in computer science and spent many hours laboring over the card punch and standing in line at the card reader. I still have a punch card sitting next to the external drives on my computer desk. That was a time when you really had to work out your algorithm and code BEFORE you started to type. Debugging was the kind of affair that involved looking through 15 to 20 error codes that bore no relationship to the actual error in the code and then sleuthing around to find the missing semi-colon on one of your program cards. Mind you, each card was a separate line in the program.

It was at NCSU that I discovered 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional design courses for non-majors. Turning point. I decided to pursue my love for photography as a career and soon found myself at Randolph Community College earning a degree in photography. It was on my first internship that I met Jim Erickson. He offered me a job but made me finish finish the program first. Within 4 months of being hired, I was shooting my own projects with art directors from the Martin Agency, McKinney and Silver and other great creative shops. The team there was incredible and enjoyed the problem solving and creative sessions with folks like Alex Bee, Charles Harris, Charlie Brown, Willa Stein, Kyle Hood and Wes Hardison. We worked on both print and TV and production ranged across shooting, styling, prop and set creation, scouting, casting etc.

After my time at Erickson Productions, Taylor Images was born. I continued to produce work for some great creatives and was able to start branching out into other disciplines including copywriting and web design and development. Technology was beginning to blossom and Photoshop created a whole new area of challenge and growth. No longer was I shooting pieces on white and having to mess with the shadows to get them to the point that the airbrush artist could finish them up. No more 16×20 black and white prints for newspaper. Everything was delivered on a SyQuest drive. The eight track of the digital realm!

Over the years, I found myself doing more and more photo retouching and less and less photography. I also started picking up clients who needed creative strategy as well as other advertising services. Several years ago, when we moved to Myrtle Beach, I started work at LHWH advertising where I really had the chance to jump into many of the varied disciplines I enjoy today. Concept and copywriting, Flash programming, design, web programming, etc. I worked closely with Sheriar press in the development and testing of dynamic digital printing processes that enable a client to print highly-targeted visual pieces to a database of contacts. Once again I was able to work with and learn from creatives like Keith Borshak, Tracey Floyd, Carrera guru Terry Johnson and Ron Carter.

It has been a fun, challenging and amazing ride so far and I am looking forward to discovering where the road leads form here. If you would like to share the path for a while, give me a call. I’d love the company.