Chapter 1

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My name is Justin Key and I am a photographer.

Portrait of photographer Justin Key behind a camera on a tripod alongside a river.

That's really the whole story so far. I was never certain which way I wanted to go with my photography until now. So if you are reading this welcome to chapter two. Chapter one is usually filled with character introduction, so I can fill you in on the first 25 years of my life. After that though, the book is relatively blank.

I was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin and as far as I'm concerned, that will always be home. The world of photography started to appeal to me from a young age. When I wasn't outside playing, I was inside flipping through books and magazines looking at photographs. Eventually, taking pictures was all I wanted to do.

That brought me to Marquette, Michigan at the University of Northern Michigan where I got my degree in photography. The cold never bothered me. I spent a lot of time outside shooting in conditions I wasn't sure the camera was built to withstand. The stars and northern lights are beautiful there; so even in the dead of winter I would be out playing with my camera.

After I graduated, I moved to Milwaukee and was ready to leave soon after getting there. It just wasn't the place for me. My girlfriend, Sarah, and I started talking about getting out and finding a place to start an adventure. One year after graduating, we were looking for places to live in Denver, Colorado, a landscape photographers paradise.

We have been here a year now and still don't know what to do with ourselves. Sarah is now my fiance and soon to be wife come this October. We have been taking in all the city has to offer and spending as much time in the mountains as we can. Together with our dog Lambeau, Go Pack Go, we are constantly up to something.

So that was chapter one. On to chapter two, and if you are reading this it is just beginning. Sarah is a marketing monster and has prompted me to reboot my Facebook fan page, start a blog (Welcome!), and I am also in the process of designing a website. The first tip I can give young photographers trying to get started, marry a marketing monster.

College didn't prepare me for getting started on my own. I added an entrepreneurship minor in college to help, but art is not the type of business we talked about. Follow us as we take my dream of being a fine art landscape photographer and attempt to turn it into a reality.

You can watch my skills and techniques evolve. We will learn a lot of hard lessons along the way that may help you in your own endeavors. There was no training for this, no list of steps to follow to build a name for yourself. I've had a hard time trying to figure out where to begin, but like I said, welcome to chapter 2.

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