Mike was born in 1977 and spent many years looking for a talent in which he could be a master rather than a jack (of all trades). After spending years writing novels (for which there has not been an attempt to publish) Mike attended a photography workshop in France in 2015 which changed his creative life. He’d finally found a medium where he had some real talent and the philosophy of putting the relationship before the photo really resonated with him. His first project involved photographing children of friends and other families he met. The idea was that this would be done over years to create a body of work to document on a small scale the growth of the children. After his divorce, Mike started to focus on developing more underwater images he’d started making with some of the children with whom he’d been working and making them into a body of work. With the huge change in his personal life it was a time of new beginnings. Water is often symbol of rebirth and the images have a dreamlike quality, reflecting the need to “dream it before you can be it.” Mike was baptized in 2019 after years of atheism and his ongoing spiritual development is reflected in works that show people rising towards or moving towards light. Spiritual development involves a continual struggle not to backslide into darker ways and these pieces are meant to show that trial.