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To request working with me I do not recommend messaging me here. Your best bet is FB messaging. https://www.facebook.com/craig.gum.52

I am not formally schooled in photography or any other form of artistic expression. I started messing around with photoshop around ten years ago because I was fascinated by the possibilities of altering images. I had a small Nikon coolpix camera that I used to snap pictures of my son Gage. I turned that baby to “auto” and went to town. I had absolutely no clue about aperture or shutterspeed or composition or lighting, and i didn’t really care. I just wanted pictures of Gage that I could load into photoshop to play with. I read dozens of books and worked my way through hundreds of tutorials to learn the ins and outs of photoshop. It wasnt long before I realized that if I really wanted to get the images I wanted out of photoshop I would have to learn to take much better pictures. All I knew at that point was that I needed more resolution in the pictures and that I would probably have to figure out how to stop letting the camera decide what settings would be best, i.e. turn off the auto€. I bought a Nikon D40 and proceeded to turn all my attention from learning more about photoshop to learning everything I could about the mechanics of photography. Like any good addict I became completely obsessed. (more about that later). Up until the last couple of years I was completely self taught. Through lots of books and magazines, trial and error and countless lost pictures to exposure problems, photography was starting to make sense to me. Fast forward a bit to today, I have upgraded from a $50 point and shoot camera to a Nikon D800's, lots of lenses and enough strobe-lights to illuminate the entire cul de sac that I live on. I have many friends that also regard photography as their passion and I have learned a great deal from them all at a much faster pace than I ever could have on my own. Here are a just a few that I have worked with the most.

Tim Rogan: Awesome photog and all around great guy. Tim is very precise and methodical. He seems to get an idea in his head of the image he wants to capture and it’s a guarantee that before he finishes that image will be on his camera. He studies and follows the photography industry like nobody's business and is always one of the first people I will call for advice. Here are some of his images. http://www.flickr.com/photos/24296518@N04/

Steven Skelton: One of the first photographers I met in Athens. Steven leads the Athens area strobists meet and is a fantastic photographer. Steven is probably the most technically proficient photog that I know. I’m not even sure that he knows that some cameras have an “A” as a choice. Take a look at his website when you get a chance. http://ssp-studios.com/index2.php#/home/

Grant Beecher: I always look forward to what Grant will put out next. Grant is wonderfully creative with his compositions and backgrounds. I can’t say enough about his pictures, you will just have to check them out for yourself. http://www.grantbeecherphoto.com/

Kate Hansel: There is one thing that always comes to my mind when I think about Kate'€™s images. She has an uncanny ability to find that one detail in the environment that she is shooting that will completely capture the mood and feeling perfectly. Kate and I could be shooting the exact same event, I might produce a few dozen pictures that I believe highlight the event nicely and then I see the one picture that Kate posts and I am left to think to myself €hmmmmm, yep, that'€™s what I was trying to say€.

Wesley Abney: Wesley uses color, selective focus, and subject distance beautifully. You would be hard pressed to find him without his camera and it pays off with some of the images I have seen him capture. Not only great with portraits but he is also truly able to give a random, inanimate object life. http://www.flickr.com/photos/wesleysabney/

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