I’d love to tell your story.

I’m a photographer. I don’t use words to tell stories, I use photographs. When I say that in public, people often ask how a photographer can tell a story with a single picture.

I tell them that’s the fun part.

As a photographer, I work with light, focus, and composition. I use anything from the ambient light to a strobe light. I frame what I shoot very carefully so the eye is drawn where I want it to be drawn. I use focus to ensure that the right things stand out, and I use color to ensure the picture says what I want it to say.

I’ve been a professional photographer since 2001, doing primarily portrait photography on location. I get a tremendous amount of joy traveling to different places, meeting different people, and tackling the challenge of translating their story into a photograph.

We’re bombarded by images today. Advertising is everywhere, on our streets, on our buses, on our trains, and even on social media, everything that isn’t an ad has a picture anyway. It can be incredibly hard to stand out.

That’s why I don’t just try to take a picture that accurately reflects what a person looks like. Putting your story into a picture starts with that wow factor, the one thing that’s going to make your portrait get noticed in the flood of images we deal with every day.

Finding that wow factor can be tricky. Photography—like most art—is part technical skill and part inspiration. I try to distill your story down to its very essence then figure out how to make the camera reflect that essence. It can be a fascinating challenge, but it’s one I love and sometimes the most difficult challenges turn out to be the most remarkable photographs.

You have a story. Your business and your brand have a story. I’d love to help tell them.

Martin Hogeboom