Today we’d like to introduce you to Jon Morgan.
Hi Jon, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I grew up as a country kid in North Alabama playing baseball, riding bikes and climbing trees and had honestly really not left the state my entire life, my 4-way stop life was kinda insular. My father died when I was 14 years old and that was quite a drastic change in all of our lives but he had always told me he wanted me to learn computers and get a degree both of which I enthusiastically did years later with him always on my mind. By virtue of his passing, I was able to attend to college and honor his wishes with money my mom had saved from social security and insurance, I will never forget that and am I aware of my privilege and opportunity and strive to pay that forward. In our small town we had a local art guild that held a competition for a small art scholarship and I won along with my friend Kelly Porter but upon getting accepted into Nossi College of Art I felt like I wasn’t ready for such a big change to move from Alabama to the big city of Nashville, TN. I attended a local community college in Alabama while still chasing clouds in the afternoons and learning how to load film and studying the old classic masters on my own.
A couple of years later, I received another letter Nossi that a digital photography program had started and to see if I would be interested and of course, I was so that lead to me asking “Hey can I move to Nashville and attend photography school?” To which my mom said why not and 6 weeks later I moved to Nashville by myself in 2001 and since have been around the world and even lived in NY for a short time working with Paul Aresu with clients such as Nike, Adidas and the Discovery Channel. I am still just as excited by photography today as I was when I took my first picture. I love this job. Just this week I have shot from a helicopter over the Ocoee, fashion for H Bar C and the launch of the first Mazda CX-50 in Huntsville, AL for the Associated Press!! It’s always something new and different and I absolutely thrive on the challenges of making images for several different types of clients and making those deadlines happen. At the end of the day, I love to exceed clients’ expectations by going above and beyond. Have a camera will travel!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Most of my challenges lie within myself and 100% of the time I have found anything that scares me is worth doing every time. I was fortunate to have a mother that fully supported me and I don’t mean just financially for school but by believing in me that I could accomplish my goals and succeed when I began and I think that is very important for a good support system in anything really but especially for a kid from a 4-way stop to embark on a career most didn’t really know existed back then even myself. Believing in yourself and what you can do is huge because at times I can be my own worst enemy and self defeating. I have dealt with major anxiety in recent years and would like to let others know that it’s not a stigma but something everyone deals with and recently heard a quote that just made perfect sense to me. If you think you can’t, you won’t. If you think you can, you will.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Richard Avedon influenced me to be a portrait photographer. His approach to engage these moments still resonate with me. When I first started shooting it was clouds and vistas I couldn’t shoot people until I saw Avedon’s documentary In the American West. From there I discovered Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia Okeefe, Gordon S Parks and more in school and fell in love with Ansel Adam’s zone system. I still feel fortunate that digital was just starting when I went to college so I got the benefits of learning film and darkroom along digital capture. This is very important in regards to how I approach shooting, lensing and exposure to do this day. Learning both mediums side by side helped me understand how digital photography worked and the history of film in the production of digital cameras and sensors. I then met and worked closely with Jack Spencer for years. He is one of the best living photographers today and from there worked with Mark Tucker as a camera assistant another amazing portrait photographer so from those two alone I developed even more into a portrait photographer and embraced the art side of photographer as a process I wanted to include in my own work. I guess I would say I’m an environmental portrait photographer at the core. I also am licensed to fly drone but perhaps what I am most proud of is working for a bucket list client National Geographic at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL and doing underwater photography in the dive tank!! My mom still thinks that’s pretty cool.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
That time I wrote myself a note to go home with my favorite cousins from school and got not only both 1st grade teachers to sign it but the bus driver too……and it worked!!!!!! But not for long, I was definitely missed when I didn’t get off the bus with my sister. Everyone loved going there from our town, we all pretty much grew up there and it was great. Summer days in a creek swinging on vines and climbing trees with my cousins Robert (RIP) and Erik. I still think about those days a lot.
Contact Info:
- Email: jon@jonmorganphotography.us
- Website: www.jonmorganphotography.com
- Instagram: @jonmorganphotography
- Other: www.jmp-art.com
Image Credits
Erik Moses
Kat
DeeOh Gee Band
Waylon Payne
Mindy Reese
Smile Direct/HP
Jeanie
Honest Charlie
H Bar C
Alex
