A creative with
homemade skills
"There are no mistakes, only new parts"
~Neil Peart
Hello, glad you stopped by! Working as a professional photographer is a fantastic job. It provides me the opportunity to meet and work with some amazing people. And it's also part of my creative nature, and so I see myself as one of the lucky few who gets to have my creative cake and eat it too. I’ve been doing this photo & video thing professionally for the past 12 years, laid off in early 2009 from my long time career in telecom engineering I decided I wasn't going back and was going pave a path of my own. I've been fortunate as a professional photographer, covering events, weddings, and corporate all over the Northern VA area. I first found my love for shooting many years ago. I'm a fully self taught photographer - learning always came easy for me, but what I think helped my photographic eye the most was being a musician. My idea & goal back in 2009 after loosing my job was pretty simple, turn one of my creative pass times in photography into my business. The original hope was and is still the same, that what I do should be different from others, and that my work must look genuine and real. And so started the journey.
Hello, glad you stopped by! I’ve been doing this photo & video thing professionally for the past 11 years, covering events, weddings, and corporate all over the Northern VA area. I first found my love for shooting many years ago, and decided to make it my living in early 2009. I'm a self taught photographer, learning was always easy for me, but what helped my photographic eye the most was being a musician. My idea & goal was pretty simple, make my photo passion my business. The hope was that what I do should be different from others, and that my work must look genuine and real. And so started the journey.
"There are no mistakes, only new parts"
~Neil Peart
Why Work With Me?
one
12 Yrs experience
Cameras and cell phone photo apps are very popular. But I believe exceptional images are much more than a cool iPhone pic with an effect done in an app (although I do that too). Being a great photographer requires skill and technique, which can take years to develop and refine.
two
Quality with Style
I’ve always thought my photographic style for photos and film is a product of my life as a musician and creative person, that blend with my approach. All my years of experience as a photographer, videographer, and musician have shaped my style into one that always looks to do it differently.
three
A PRO WITH PASSION
Choosing your photographer is an important choice. If you choose my services, you get someone who strives for great results with professionalism, personality and passion. And I’ll will share with you my positive, respectful, and easy to work with attitude during your photo and video experience.
Salutes
"Donnie did a great job with our wedding pictures and video"
He really took the time to make sure the pictures came out great and that we got exactly what we wanted. The video was way more than what we were expecting. We both were very pleased with the results of both. We would recommend gray area photography to any one that asks.
~ Joe and Ashley
Get to know me
A drummer who fell in love with photography. Little did I know the two were very much intertwined. Both requiring creativity, focus, and relentless determination. Somehow I luckily ended doing both for a living.
I've been dabbling in photos and cameras for more years then I care to admit. Long before I took this as my profession I'd been "the" family photographer at all the family events, birthdays, holidays, and of course the occasional sibling wedding.
It wasn't until my wife and I got married did I really come to understand weddings from the "other" side - the couples side, the planning side, the researching side, the deciding side. All that we ended up doing kinda gave me a good understanding of the DIY'ers wedding planning.
