Bio

The Formal:

The son of a noted architect, Allison's first love was painting and illustrating - skills he employs today as a professional photographer. Allison began his career in photography in 1992. After earning a Bachelor of Science degree from Georgia State University in Atlanta, 1990, he served as a photographer in the United States Navy from 1992 to '96, homeport, San Diego, California. During his four years at sea on a U.S. Marine Corps Helicopter Carrier, he served on two tours of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Asia, and the Middle East. Upon completion of duty, he became a freelance photographer and traveled widely throughout the United States, choosing architecture as his concentration. He returned to Atlanta in the summer of 1997 and developed his specialization in this field. In July of 2002, he moved his base to Colorado, and has since continued to expand his services to include portraiture, editorial, advertising, products, travel, fine art landscapes, and multi-media marketing films. He shoots regionally and nationally on location for small businesses and national corporations, and also makes his services available in selected international locales. His imagery has been widely disseminated in all types of business collateral, as well as advertising and trade publications, local and national magazines, office lobbies, corporate websites, and television commercials.

The Personal:

Each of us arrives in this world possessing natural, God-given talents. My first epiphany relevant to this came early. Around the age of three, I was instinctually drawn to illustrating the private world in my mind's eye onto paper, with pencils, inks, and pastels. A few years later came painting, and I'd found my niche in life as an artist. While I observed my peers saturating themselves in the joys of sports, or music, or perhaps business enterprises (which at the time extended to profitable lemonade stands), my soul was utterly enamored with the inestimable fascinations of the visual arts. In the mythical sense, Leonardo DaVinci was my first, personal hero. By the age of five, I'd easily spent a thousand hours carefully studying his accumulated illustrations and paintings. By the age of 10, I received my first commission to paint a mural. I think I earned something like $50 to paint it, but minimum wage at the time--as I remember it--was around $1.65. Not bad for a 10 year old, I thought to myself. At 14, I painted a 5' by 3' exact copy of the original graphic of the play "Godspell", and it hung in my church for many years thereafter. That was pro bono, of course.

I spent almost every Sunday afternoon after church, for the first 16 years of my life, hanging out in my room painting or illustrating. And I loved every minute of it. By the age of 18, I'd created thousands of illustrations, and many hundreds of paintings and works in pencils, pastels, and charcoals. I fell in love with photography sometime during those years, when on a snowy, winter morning, the pastel light mirroring off the land's, whited beauty entranced me. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But with Polaroid and Brownie cameras in hand, and several roles of that wondrous old Kodak film, Kodachrome, I ventured out to explore the medium, and see what I could make of it. Those original photographs never made it into the Guggenheim, and I'm fairly certain they never will. But it was my initial foray into translating the world around us into the visual medium that's been my way of life for nearly 20 years now. To my mind, creating fine, professional photography is a form of painting; the sole difference being the tools we employ in the creative process. I began with canvasses and papers, pencils and inks, oils and acrylics. Now I employ digital cameras, CCD's, computers, software, and digital printers. For me, interpreting the world around us by means of photographic art isn't a hobby, much less merely a means of paying the bills. It is a way of life. Mastered at its finest, it forms a bridge between the highest ideals in the human spirit, and the pragmatic applications of them. It forms a visual door through which wisdom might speak to our souls, and inspire us to achieve its highest ideals. It quietly reminds us, that masterful excellence in all that we think and do, matters. I hope you enjoy my work, and that you'll return often for further, inspirational journeys into the exquisite world around us.

Namaste,

Allison