There was a lot going on in my life eight years ago. My dad was terminally ill with pulmonary fibrosis and passed away October 25, 2017. I wanted to capture my dad’s final days and my family with my dad through pictures to keep his memory going for generations to come. This is how I set out to tell the visual story of my dad’s journey.

I share some of that in this video:

A documentary family photography workshop changed it all

A few months prior in mid-summer, while in the midst of revolving hospital stays and living in crisis mode, I decided to take an online photography workshop all about capturing everyday life. My mentor, Colie James, a documentary family photographer out of Colorado, provided me a 100-page pdf booklet and weekly check-ins with homework. Her program offered what I was lacking: understanding manual exposure and visual storytelling.

Before I get too ahead of myself though, I did understand how to take a picture using manual settings, but I struggled using light and exposure to my advantage and getting the pictures I wanted while photographing inside. Also, I needed better equipment.

It started with a fine arts degree in photography

I went to college for photography. In 2001, I enrolled at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh for photography and learned the basic and advance functions of photography. I was trained on film, using a manual camera and spending hours in a black and white darkroom. Two years later, I graduated with an associate degree and went onto Youngstown State University to get a bachelor of fine arts degree in photography, all the while still using a film camera. I spent hours to days there in the color darkroom. I lived and breathed making a photograph. Crafting light, shutter and color: I was a manual photographer.

My camera of choice was a Hasselblad medium format 6x6 film camera, which I still have. I used that camera for a decade before switching over to digital.

My Hasselblad medium format 6x6 film camera helped me create my portfolio

During my years in Youngstown, I began creating a portfolio of street portraits - people standing in the middle of the street with no smile or expression. For me, these photos were the beginning years of visual storytelling. I was interested in their body language and the honest emotion on their faces while they stood in their environment.

Here are a few examples:

While getting pretty good at taking these pictures, I couldn’t master taking quality lit photos inside a building with my film or digital camera, when I tinkered around on a digital camera. I really wanted to take photos of my everyday life and the people I spent time with. At the time, I had a really expensive digital camera, but on a whim, I traded it for a used Hasselblad film camera at Adorama camera store while living in New York City the summer of 2007.

Going from film to digital photography was worthwhile

I took this photo using a Nikon D90 camera and Nikon 70-200mm lens.

Cassidy, 2014

Fast forward a few years, I bought another digital camera, a Nikon D90, which produced too many pixels in my pictures and lacked the ability to take a well-lit photo inside a building because the ISO range was limited. About to give up on my dream of visual storytelling and thinking about selling my camera equipment altogether, I started taking photography workshops around 2013 to relearn what I already knew years prior. I learned to work around the limitations of my Nikon D90 and continued to take meaningful photographs.

I’ve always been interested in people living out their lives through pictures. I decided to keep taking workshops until I mastered documenting everyday life.

That’s when I found Colie James from a Google search. She was the kind of photographer I wanted to be. She was someone who took her camera with her everywhere she went, documenting life along the way.

With her help, I quickly found out that I needed a new camera that had a high ISO range of at least 2500 or greater to shoot inside along with a new lens that allowed the aperture to open up to at least f/1.8. So that summer of 2017, I bought a Nikon D750 camera and a Sigma Art 35mm f/1.8 lens.

With the foundation already built, I wasn’t afraid to take risks. I moved my aperture, shutter speed and ISO (what makes an exposure) in all different directions then snapped photo after photo. It was through trial and error with the underlying education that moved my skills forward. It was the years of studying film photography. It was the years of taking pictures of everyone I knew just so I could improve my skills. And maybe, hopefully, build a portfolio I was proud of. It was Colie James’ workshop that taught me how to properly expose a photograph with the right equipment.

We have pictures of my dad’s final days

I began taking pictures of my dad at my parents house while he sat in his recliner in the living or lay on the hospital bed in my parents room. In between caring for my dad, I snapped photos of my mom taking care of him and my nieces and nephew interacting with their grandpa.

Those photos aren’t just my story to tell, but I’ll share this one: my mom, a caretaker and devoted wife of 40 years, holding my dad’s hand a few weeks before he died. I used my Sigma Art 35mm f/1.8 lens for this photo as well as the other photos I took of him.

I took this using a Nikon D750 camera with the Sigma Art 35mm f 1.8 lens.

Mom and dad, 2017

Now, I’m a documentary family photographer

Since then, I’ve photographed the everyday life of other families. I’ve photographed their big and small milestones. I’ve captured their moments together. Their memories.

My work primarily exists in Northeast Ohio, but I’ve ventured out of state to places like Pittsburgh. When I travel internationally and domestically, my camera travels with me so I can keep documenting my life.

Here are a few examples of my travels using the Sigma Art 35mm f/1.8 lens:

I’m even working on material to teach a visual storytelling workshop that not only includes documentary photography but editorial photography. And I welcome any students currently wanting to learn.