A lot of people, even my parents, thought, "Art school, I don't know. We'll support you but the success rate for artists is really slim."

The cool thing for me about moving to New York was that I got to create a new family.

A lot of people, even my parents, thought, "Art school, I don't know. We'll support you but the success rate for artists is really slim."

From 8 to 19, I was skateboarding every single day. That was my life. I worked at a skate shop. I watched skate videos.

I slowly began making a few photos with animals over the years, and I liked how people reacted to them. When I would have the animals on set, I'd notice the way the models would interact with them and there was so much true emotion that you rarely see between two human beings.

I was growing up in the suburbs; I was one of eight kids. So I did have a community when I was younger, but all of my brothers and sisters were older.

Actually, I didn't study photography at first. I went to school for painting my first year, poetry my second year, graphic design my third and fourth year, and photography my fifth.