How I went from poverty to six figures a year with a camera.

The Dream That Embezzled Itself

I started my career on the cutting edge . I was working for a Portland tech startup, creating 360-degree virtual tours before "Google Maps" was even a household name. Life was good. We lived in a beautiful home on the edge of the Portland Golf Course. I could sit on my front porch and watch the golfers while my two little girls played. We had a private park and tennis courts just a few blocks away. My home life was good and business was great. In fact our company was being courted by a major search engine and many of us OG employees were on the verge of being wealthy.

Then the accountants found "Ann Taylor."

An executive had been embezzling thousands to fund a luxury wardrobe. The deal collapsed, the investors bailed, and I was laid off. Overnight, the "future" I had built for my family evaporated.

From the Fairway to the Father-in-Law’s Couch

The fall was fast and it was brutal. We went from the golf course view to squatting on a farm in Sweet Home, Oregon. I went from high-tech photography to no income and a gas tank on empty. We were living on my father-in-law’s couch, wondering how to survive in a logging town that wasn't hiring.

To feed my girls, I leveraged my 6'5" 210lb. frame and became a bartender / bouncer at a rough biker bar. I spent two and a half years breaking up fights and stopping drug deals for $7.10 an hour plus tips. We were on food stamps. We relied on the local food bank. There were even several Christmases where my daughters’ only presents came from the local church. It was embarrassing to have fallen so far, and it hurt to work that hard and still not make ends meet

The Itch You Can’t Scratch

If you are a creative at your core, you know that making things isn't a hobby. It’s a necessity. When the money stopped and the photography gear was gone, I didn’t just lose a job—I lost my creative outlet.

I was working 60 hours a week in a rough biker bar, surrounded by noise and chaos, while my internal creative fire was dying on the inside. It felt like an itch I couldn’t scratch. It made me miserable. I became the worst version of myself because I had nowhere to put my creativity.

I started looking for art anywheere I could find it. I let the grass in my backyard grow five feet tall just so I could mow intricate, geometric mazes for my kids to crawl through. I carved pumpkins with power tools to get designs so detailed they shouldn't have been possible. I even made pancakes in the shape of cartoon characters.

I was going nuts trying to stay a creator in a world that only wanted me to be a bouncer.

The Valentine That Saved My Soul

My wife saw what was happening to me. She saw me fading away.

For over a year, she did something I didn’t know was possible in our situation. Five dollars here. Ten dollars there. She tucked away pennies from the grocery budget and extra change whenever posible.

On Valentine’s Day, with a beautifull ear to ear smile and a twinkel in her eye she handed me a box. . Inside was a used Olympus E-10.

She had saved $600—an impossible fortune for us at the time—just to give me my creative voice back. To this day, I have never received a better gift, and I never will. Because when I held that camera, I felt the weight of her belief in me. I wasn’t just "Daniel the Bouncer" anymore. I was a photographer again.

I hit the ground running. I didn't care that it was a $600 used camera. I didn't care that I didn't have a studio. I had a lens and my family had a way out..

The Kitchen Table Studio

Most people wait for the "perfect time" to start a business. I didn't have that luxury. I was a stay-at-home dad by day and a bouncer by night. My only "office hours" were the 90 minutes in the afternoon when both my daughters finally fell asleep at the same time.

I didn't have a studio, I didn't have models, and I had zero experience in professional portraiture. But I had that $600 used Olympus and a hunger to get off food stamps.

While my kids napped, I turned my kitchen table into my laboratory. I started scouring the internet for a way to make money with my camera immediately, and that’s when I found a fledgling company called iStockphoto.com. At the time, they were the pioneers of the digital stock photography world, but as I looked through their collection, I realized they had a massive hole in their image library: High-quality food photography. Specifically, they were missing authentic, "down-home" food photos of BBQ.

I didn't have professional studio lights. I didn't even have a flash. All I had was a window and a few pieces of white poster board I bought at Walmart.

I’d set up my "studio" on the kitchen table using last night's dinner. I would chase the natural light coming through the window and use that cheap poster board to bounce the shadows away. I experimented with angles and composition until I heard a baby cry over the monitor. I was teaching myself the high-end lighting skills required for pro portraits using nothing but the sun and a piece of cardboard during the cracks in my incredibly crazy daily schedule.

The 33-Cent Revolution

I applied to be a photographer for iStock.com on a Thursday and uploaded my first batch of "Kitchen Table" BBQ shots on Friday. By Monday morning, I had sold 1 single image.

My total profit? 11 cents. To some, that’s a joke. To me, it was a revolution. I took a bunch of digital ones and zeros and turned them into acutall cold hard cash. How crazy is that?

Plus It was the first time in years I had made money that didn't involve breaking up a fight at a bar.

I realized right then: I didn't need a boss, and I didn't need a miracle. I just needed to fill the holes in the market. I hit that BBQ niche with everything I had. 11 cents turned into $100, then $1,200, and eventually $2,500 a month. I used every spare penny from those stock sales to buy one piece of gear at a time—my first real flash, a better lens, a light meter. I was building a world-class photography studio 11 cents at a time, all from a kitchen table in a 900-square-foot house.

From the Small Town Butcher Shop to a Boujee First Avenue Studio

My first physical studio was a tiny, $400-a-month, butcher shop that I converted into a photo studio, located in Jefferson, Oregon. It was...let’s be nice and use the word, humble. But I was thrilled to call it mine. It was the place where I finally stepped away from the biker bar and the food stamp lines forever.

Since then, the snowball hasn’t stopped. Today, my studio is located on First Avenue in a historic downtown district. It’s the kind of space I used to dream about: reclaimed hardwood floors, exposed brick, and massive skylights that let in the kind of light I once had to chase with a piece of cardboard. I’m situated right next to the high-end restaurants and boutiques, serving clients who are afluent enough to drop 6k without batting an eye.

Why I’m Telling You This

Every morning when I turn the key in that historic door on First Avenue, I feel a deep sense of gratitude. But I also feel a responsibility.

I know exactly what it’s like to be the stay- at- home parrent who is exhausted, broke, and creatively starving. I remember the weight of a $600 investment that you can barely afford and the gut wrenching feeling when your money runs out.

I’m telling you all of this because I want to pay back this industry that has been so good to me and my family by being the mentor I didn't have 16 years ago. So let me start our new relationship by saying this…

Whether you are starting from zero on your kitchen table or you’re an established photographer struggling to turn a profit, I want you to believe one thing:

Your circumstances do not define you. They are just the starting line and really all that matters is where you end up.

If I could build a six-figure business from a kitchen table while raising kids and working a night shift at a biker bar, I can help you do it, too.

Please Reach out and let me show you the roadmap—because you don’t have to figure this out alone.

Sincelry your friend,

Daniel