After graduating from the South East Center of Photographic studies in Daytona Beach Florida, I was chosen from 4,000 photographers to intern and eventually staff at Walt Disney Creative Photography department in Orlando Florida. In my time with Disney I was required to handle many large-scale photography shoots including national advertising campaigns and many film and television projects. I had many photographs published by Disney including much of the opening promotions for the Animal Kingdom theme park. In 1999 I left Disney and moved west to Los Angeles where I began working in the film industry shortly after arriving. I worked primarily as a location scout for the studios on commercial and film projects. I have worked on over a hundred productions including Vanilla Sky, Swordfish, AI, BMW films.com projects and many TV commercials. In 2004 I moved to Melbourne Australia where I had an opportunity to live and work on some editorial images as well as some personal photography. I returned in 2006 to the east coast where I am from. Shortly after, I met Gili and we started our own multimedia company called Elysium Multimedia. I was highly motivated to start my own project that I would have total control of, so I reached back to my past to the things that I was inspired by to help form the original concepts for the “Warbird Pinup Girls” calendar.
When I first came to the United States in 2006 I was not familiar with the 1940’s pin up girls. Although I always loved Marilyn Monroe and the classics, I never heard of WWII nose-art and the Alberto Vargas famous pinup girls. When I met Christian he introduced me to the retro style from the 40's and I immediately fell in love with it. Having majored in fashion before, the Warbird Pinup Girls project felt like a great fit for me and I quickly started getting involved with the styling for Christian’s photo shoots. I always thought that the women in the 40's were very classy, elegant and graceful and I enjoyed browsing through the vintage shops for great accessories and accents to our pinup looks. Being a web and graphic designer in my profession, I helped Christian design our calendars and marketing materials. When working on the Warbird Pinup Girls I always try to recreate these looks as authenticly and accurately as I can. Many people still look back to those days and love those classic looks and how we recreated them in our modern images.
