Opening Crawl
Not surprisingly, it never occurred to me to introduce myself. Shall we?
My name is Tanner. I’m a dad, husband, brother, and son to the most wonderful people on the planet, and I’m a portrait photographer in San Antonio, Texas. I was born in Austin, raised in Dripping Springs, went to school in Corpus Christi, and landed here when I followed the love of my life and we made it home. I’m not much for cities but I do love San Antonio - when I want the lights and the crowds and the city, I have it, and when I need to get away I can round a corner and be right back in the hill country. That kind of range makes taking pictures in San Antonio never dull, even returning to my favorite locations to get new perspectives.
I’ve had a camera on me for just about every trip and outing for years, but as you may have seen in my overview (or just the title of the website), my real photography journey began with my daughter. When she was born I had never been more proud of anything, and I took photos of her. A ton. I began to get an eye for specifically capturing moments that I knew I wanted to remember forever, and when I shared them with family that feeling came through. That was when I first felt like an artist, and that I could do this for a living - the purpose and feeling I had when shooting was conveyed through my images, which I honestly didn’t expect. I would have been totally fine with my feelings and my images remaining just for me, but I can create something special. I wanted to share that with others.
Let’s talk about process. This party may not be interesting to everyone, but I hear it’s good for SEO. My composition style is pretty simple. I favor center-weighted images and I like to give my subjects a lot of negative space - other photographers might think it just makes the subject smaller but to me, it makes my subject seem… respected? As if they are given the space needed to glow in a sense. I don’t like poses, I don’t know that I’ve really ever put any effort into looking up poses or trying to get someone to look a certain way. I’ve said it before, this life is filled with beautiful moments, whether captured or not. My goal is to just try and not let them all slip by.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my TED talk. I greatly appreciate if you’ve read this far, it honestly means the world to me to be able to make a career out of something that I love to do. I might make another post next week or more likely in a month or two.
See you then,
