Brad Sprayberry

Creating images has always fascinated me. I’ve owned various cameras for more than fifty years. Everything from a 1970 Kodak Instamatic with a Magicube flash to my current Nikon DSLR. And I’ve gone from developing negatives and printing my own black and whites in my mom’s laundry room (yes…I turned it into a darkroom at age 15) to editing digital images on a laptop.

Photography is a way to show the ordinary, the everyday, in a different light or from a different perspective to evoke an emotional response. As an observer of a “finished” image – whether it’s on-line, or hanging in a gallery or on your living room wall – you won’t necessarily have the same emotional response to what you see as I did when I looked through the viewfinder or pulled it up on a monitor. For me, the satisfaction is in knowing that an image has struck a chord with you and that it made you feel … something.

I was a communications major who worked as a television reporter/anchor before going back to law school and practicing law as an environmental attorney. I’m now the chief talent officer for a large, business-focused law firm in Florida. In each of my professional roles, written and oral communication has been critical. But with a camera in hand, my goal is to communicate visually. Everyone has a different eye and a different viewpoint. But it’s capturing the right mix of light and shadow that lies at the heart of every exceptional image. In my mind photography done right … makes you look at the world differently.