My Exploration into Mixed Media Collage as a Film Photographer

I’ve been shooting film for over ten years now. That feels strange to say. It’s one of the only constants that’s stuck with me. Through college, through jobs, through moves, through everything. The medium has always felt honest. Physical. Slower. Grounded. Like time itself is etched into the grain.

For most of that time, I’ve stayed in a pretty specific lane. If you’ve followed my work, you probably know what I mean. Soft light. Southern towns. Empty parking lots. State Fairs. Childhood shadows. That ache of something almost remembered. The photos I took felt like pieces of me. And for a long time, that was enough.

But lately I’ve felt a pull. A push, really.

The work I’ve been making recently feels different. It’s more chaotic. More layered. I’ve started exploring photographic collage. Scanned film images reworked in Photoshop and stacked on top of each other like fractured memories or overlapping thoughts. Sometimes it feels like I’m not even making photos anymore.

I’m making visual reactions. Emotional records. Something that falls somewhere between memory and perception.

Trying something new like this is scary. There’s always this nagging voice that says, “What if people stop liking your work?” Or worse, “What if I stop liking my work?”

When you’ve built something that feels recognizable, it’s hard to let go of the comfort that brings. But I’m realizing that style isn’t a cage. It’s a phase. And if I’ve learned anything from the past decade of making images, it’s that the ones I care about the most always come from being honest. Even if that honesty is messy. Even if it looks nothing like what I’ve done before.

This shift still carries all the themes I’ve always returned to. Time, nostalgia, the strange haze of memory, identity, loss, and the quiet beauty in the everyday. But instead of documenting the world as I see it, I’m letting the images bend and blur until they reflect the way things feel instead. I’m more interested in the emotional texture than the literal one.

These new pieces aren’t meant to be perfect. They’re meant to be felt. Like a daydream you can’t quite shake. Like a photograph you’re not sure actually exists. Some of them are warm. Some of them are weird. Some feel familiar in a way I can’t explain. And that’s the point.

Photographic collage feels like the right place for me to explore my creativity right now. It allows me to overlap mediums, revisit my film archive, and reshape what’s already been captured into something new. It opens up a space between past and present, where the old rules don’t quite apply. That space feels more real to me than anything else right now.

I don’t know exactly where this is going, but I’ve decided to keep following it. I’ve spent a lot of time worrying about what’s “too much” or whether I’m getting too far from what people expect. But maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe the better question is, am I being true to where I’m at now?

So this is me trying to be honest. This is me letting go of the rigid, unchanging roadmap I’ve been stuck following for years now. If you’ve been around for a while, thank you. If you’re new here, welcome and thank you as well. Either way, I hope something in this work resonates with you. Even if it’s unfamiliar. Even if it’s uncomfortable.

Sometimes growth looks like disorientation. Sometimes it looks like letting go of what used to work and seeing what happens next.

Here’s to not knowing.
Here’s to evolution.