Themes
Start with something you like.
Pick your industry, click into anything, and poke around. When a theme resonates, tell us. It becomes the starting point, and we shape the rest around your business.
Portfolios and personal brands that make one person feel like a studio.
Editorial photographer, Portland, OR
Quiet light, honest faces.
Portraits and editorial work for magazines, musicians, and people who hate having their picture taken. Shooting since 2014, mostly on a Pentax 67.
Selected work
2023 to 2026
Mara shot our whole album cycle. She waits for the picture instead of forcing it, and it shows.
Commissions
What I shoot
The studio
A garage on SE Belmont with very good windows
I shoot in a converted single-car garage two blocks off Belmont. North light all day, a wall of backdrop paper, and a kettle that has never been off.
- Natural light first, strobes when the weather loses
- Film scanned in house on a Noritsu HS-1800
- Proofs within 48 hours, finals in two weeks
Before you ask
Film or digital?
Both. Portraits are usually Pentax 67 on Portra 400. Editorial deadlines get digital, because editors like sleeping.
Do you shoot weddings?
No, but I keep a short list of people who do it well. Ask and I will make an introduction.
What does a session cost all in?
Portraits run $650 flat, prints extra. Editorial and album work is quoted per brief, and the quote is the final number.
Editorial photographer, Portland, OR
Quiet light, honest faces.
Portraits and editorial work for magazines, musicians, and people who hate having their picture taken. Shooting since 2014, mostly on a Pentax 67.
Selected work
2023 to 2026
Mara shot our whole album cycle. She waits for the picture instead of forcing it, and it shows.
Commissions
What I shoot
The studio
A garage on SE Belmont with very good windows
I shoot in a converted single-car garage two blocks off Belmont. North light all day, a wall of backdrop paper, and a kettle that has never been off.
- Natural light first, strobes when the weather loses
- Film scanned in house on a Noritsu HS-1800
- Proofs within 48 hours, finals in two weeks
Before you ask
Film or digital?
Both. Portraits are usually Pentax 67 on Portra 400. Editorial deadlines get digital, because editors like sleeping.
Do you shoot weddings?
No, but I keep a short list of people who do it well. Ask and I will make an introduction.
What does a session cost all in?
Portraits run $650 flat, prints extra. Editorial and album work is quoted per brief, and the quote is the final number.
Product designer, ex-Figma
Interfaces that stay out of the way.
I design software people use forty hours a week: dashboards, editors, internal tools. Twelve years, four products, two acquisitions.
Case studies
Recent work
Ledgerline
Rebuilt the reconciliation flow for a fintech serving 4,000 accounting firms. Task time down 38%.
Fieldnote
Design system and mobile app for a crew-management startup, taken from zero to Series A in 14 months.
Tandem
Multiplayer editing patterns for a collaborative whiteboard. Shipped to 2M users across 40 countries.
Process
Real data in every mockup
Lorem ipsum hides bad layout decisions. I start every engagement inside your product with a production account, and every screen I draw uses your actual records, edge cases included.
- Week one is an audit, not a moodboard
- Success metrics agreed in writing before pixels
- Engineers see work in progress every Friday
Theo is the rare designer who reads the SQL before touching the mockup.
Product designer, ex-Figma
Interfaces that stay out of the way.
I design software people use forty hours a week: dashboards, editors, internal tools. Twelve years, four products, two acquisitions.
Case studies
Recent work
Ledgerline
Rebuilt the reconciliation flow for a fintech serving 4,000 accounting firms. Task time down 38%.
Fieldnote
Design system and mobile app for a crew-management startup, taken from zero to Series A in 14 months.
Tandem
Multiplayer editing patterns for a collaborative whiteboard. Shipped to 2M users across 40 countries.
Process
Real data in every mockup
Lorem ipsum hides bad layout decisions. I start every engagement inside your product with a production account, and every screen I draw uses your actual records, edge cases included.
- Week one is an audit, not a moodboard
- Success metrics agreed in writing before pixels
- Engineers see work in progress every Friday
Theo is the rare designer who reads the SQL before touching the mockup.
Author of 'The Salt Orchard'
Stories about small towns and the people who almost leave them.
Three novels, one essay collection, and a monthly letter read by 12,000 people.
Books
The shelf so far
The Salt Orchard (2025)
A daughter inherits a failing oyster farm and her mother's unfinished feuds. Fourteen weeks on the bestseller list.
Winter Counsel (2022)
A small-town lawyer takes the one case everyone warned her about. Optioned for television in 2023.
Glass Hours (2019)
The debut. Two sisters, one house, thirty years of Sundays. Still the one readers argue with me about.
Quill writes the way good porches feel: unhurried, weathered, and impossible to leave.
The Letter
One essay a month, nothing else
On the first Friday of every month I send one essay, three lines about what I am reading, and any tour news. No sponsors, no roundups, no apologies for the gap since the last one.
- 12,000 readers and a reply rate that keeps me honest
- The archive is open, read before you subscribe
- Unsubscribing takes one click and zero guilt
On the road
Readings this season
Author of 'The Salt Orchard'
Stories about small towns and the people who almost leave them.
Three novels, one essay collection, and a monthly letter read by 12,000 people.
Books
The shelf so far
The Salt Orchard (2025)
A daughter inherits a failing oyster farm and her mother's unfinished feuds. Fourteen weeks on the bestseller list.
Winter Counsel (2022)
A small-town lawyer takes the one case everyone warned her about. Optioned for television in 2023.
Glass Hours (2019)
The debut. Two sisters, one house, thirty years of Sundays. Still the one readers argue with me about.
Quill writes the way good porches feel: unhurried, weathered, and impossible to leave.
The Letter
One essay a month, nothing else
On the first Friday of every month I send one essay, three lines about what I am reading, and any tour news. No sponsors, no roundups, no apologies for the gap since the last one.
- 12,000 readers and a reply rate that keeps me honest
- The archive is open, read before you subscribe
- Unsubscribing takes one click and zero guilt
On the road
Readings this season
// systems & infrastructure
I make slow things fast and fragile things boring.
Staff engineer, 14 years in. Distributed systems, query engines, and the occasional 3am incident review turned into a conference talk.
selected projects
Things that shipped
quarry
Columnar query cache that cut p99 dashboard latency from 8s to 300ms. Rust, open source, 4.2k stars.
flightcheck
Deploy preflight framework that blocked 61 bad releases last year at a fintech you have probably used.
hum
A tiny scheduler for batch ML jobs. Runs 40k jobs a day on three machines and refuses to be more interesting than that.
notes
Recent writing
Your p99 is lying to you
Why tail latency hides behind healthy averages, and the histogram trick that exposes it.
Postgres is your message queue
SKIP LOCKED, LISTEN/NOTIFY, and 10k jobs a minute without new infrastructure.
Boring on purpose
The architecture review checklist I bring to every startup that wants Kafka on day two.
Nils rebuilt our ingest pipeline in three weeks, then wrote docs good enough that we have not paged him since. Both halves mattered.
// systems & infrastructure
I make slow things fast and fragile things boring.
Staff engineer, 14 years in. Distributed systems, query engines, and the occasional 3am incident review turned into a conference talk.
selected projects
Things that shipped
quarry
Columnar query cache that cut p99 dashboard latency from 8s to 300ms. Rust, open source, 4.2k stars.
flightcheck
Deploy preflight framework that blocked 61 bad releases last year at a fintech you have probably used.
hum
A tiny scheduler for batch ML jobs. Runs 40k jobs a day on three machines and refuses to be more interesting than that.
notes
Recent writing
Your p99 is lying to you
Why tail latency hides behind healthy averages, and the histogram trick that exposes it.
Postgres is your message queue
SKIP LOCKED, LISTEN/NOTIFY, and 10k jobs a minute without new infrastructure.
Boring on purpose
The architecture review checklist I bring to every startup that wants Kafka on day two.
Nils rebuilt our ingest pipeline in three weeks, then wrote docs good enough that we have not paged him since. Both halves mattered.
How it works
Three conversations, one film
We talk
A call about how you two met and what the day looks like. If it is not a fit, I will say so and suggest someone who is.
I film
Eight hours, mostly invisible. You will forget I am there, which is the whole point.
You watch
A 12-minute film plus the full ceremony, delivered in six weeks. Grandparents get their own copy.
Stills from the films
Kind words
“We watched it four times the night it arrived, and my dad, who said videographers are a scam, cried twice.”
“She caught a moment between my mom and me that I didn't even know happened. I think about that clip a lot.”
Collections
Three ways to have a film
How it works
Three conversations, one film
We talk
A call about how you two met and what the day looks like. If it is not a fit, I will say so and suggest someone who is.
I film
Eight hours, mostly invisible. You will forget I am there, which is the whole point.
You watch
A 12-minute film plus the full ceremony, delivered in six weeks. Grandparents get their own copy.
Stills from the films
Kind words
“We watched it four times the night it arrived, and my dad, who said videographers are a scam, cried twice.”
“She caught a moment between my mom and me that I didn't even know happened. I think about that clip a lot.”
Collections
Three ways to have a film
Hand-thrown in Asheville
Pots for people who cook.
Small-batch stoneware, thrown, glazed, and fired in a backyard studio in West Asheville. New work drops the first Sunday of each month.
In the studio
This month's glazes
Workshops
Learn the wheel
I bought one mug in March. I now own nine and have opinions about shino glazes.
The work
Six weeks from bag of clay to your shelf
Everything starts as North Carolina clay from Highwater, gets thrown in batches of twenty, and fires to cone 10 in a gas kiln I built with my dad in 2021. About one pot in eight does not survive. The ones that do are the point.
- Food safe, dishwasher safe, microwave fine
- Glazes mixed in studio from raw materials
- Seconds sale twice a year, sign up for the date
Hand-thrown in Asheville
Pots for people who cook.
Small-batch stoneware, thrown, glazed, and fired in a backyard studio in West Asheville. New work drops the first Sunday of each month.
In the studio
This month's glazes
Workshops
Learn the wheel
I bought one mug in March. I now own nine and have opinions about shino glazes.
The work
Six weeks from bag of clay to your shelf
Everything starts as North Carolina clay from Highwater, gets thrown in batches of twenty, and fires to cone 10 in a gas kiln I built with my dad in 2021. About one pot in eight does not survive. The ones that do are the point.
- Food safe, dishwasher safe, microwave fine
- Glazes mixed in studio from raw materials
- Seconds sale twice a year, sign up for the date
Producer / mix engineer, Atlanta
YOUR DEMO DESERVES BETTER DRUMS.
Production, mixing, and mastering for hip-hop and R&B. 40M+ streams across placements. Two-day turnaround on mixes, no exceptions yet.
Services
Pick your lane
The room
EAST ATLANTA, NOT A BEDROOM
Purpose-built room off Moreland Ave. SSL Six front end, Augspurger mains, a vocal booth that actually got treated, and a couch that has heard some things.
- Neumann U87 and SM7B on deck
- Sessions run in Pro Tools or FL, your call
- Parking behind the building, studio dog included
Sent Rex a voice memo and a prayer. Got back the best record I've ever made.
Logistics
How do I send files?
Stems as 24-bit WAVs, labeled, no limiter on the mix bus. A template is in the booking email.
What about revisions?
Two rounds included on everything. After that it is $75 a pass, which keeps us both decisive.
Do you keep publishing?
On full production, yes, standard split, in writing before we start. Mixing and mastering is work for hire.
Producer / mix engineer, Atlanta
YOUR DEMO DESERVES BETTER DRUMS.
Production, mixing, and mastering for hip-hop and R&B. 40M+ streams across placements. Two-day turnaround on mixes, no exceptions yet.
Services
Pick your lane
The room
EAST ATLANTA, NOT A BEDROOM
Purpose-built room off Moreland Ave. SSL Six front end, Augspurger mains, a vocal booth that actually got treated, and a couch that has heard some things.
- Neumann U87 and SM7B on deck
- Sessions run in Pro Tools or FL, your call
- Parking behind the building, studio dog included
Sent Rex a voice memo and a prayer. Got back the best record I've ever made.
Logistics
How do I send files?
Stems as 24-bit WAVs, labeled, no limiter on the mix bus. A template is in the booking email.
What about revisions?
Two rounds included on everything. After that it is $75 a pass, which keeps us both decisive.
Do you keep publishing?
On full production, yes, standard split, in writing before we start. Mixing and mastering is work for hire.
Career coaching for engineers
You're not underqualified. You're under-narrated.
I help software engineers land senior and staff roles by fixing the story, not padding the resume. 200+ offers negotiated since 2019.
The program
Six weeks, three phases
Story
We rebuild how you talk about your work: impact first, stack second. Most people have the material and bury it.
Search
A target list of 20 companies and warm paths into at least half of them. No spray-and-pray applications.
Close
Mock onsites, then negotiation scripts for the offers. This phase pays for the rest.
Ways to work together
Three formats, clear prices
Results
“Went from ghosted-by-everyone to three onsites in a month. Took the staff role.”
“June's negotiation script alone was worth it. I read it basically verbatim and got $30k more.”
Fair questions
Is this resume writing?
No. We fix the underlying story; the resume falls out of that in an afternoon.
What if I'm not actively looking?
Best time to start. We build the narrative before you need it, on nobody's deadline.
Do you work with new grads?
Rarely. The program assumes four or more years of work worth narrating. The intro call will tell us fast.
Career coaching for engineers
You're not underqualified. You're under-narrated.
I help software engineers land senior and staff roles by fixing the story, not padding the resume. 200+ offers negotiated since 2019.
The program
Six weeks, three phases
Story
We rebuild how you talk about your work: impact first, stack second. Most people have the material and bury it.
Search
A target list of 20 companies and warm paths into at least half of them. No spray-and-pray applications.
Close
Mock onsites, then negotiation scripts for the offers. This phase pays for the rest.
Ways to work together
Three formats, clear prices
Results
“Went from ghosted-by-everyone to three onsites in a month. Took the staff role.”
“June's negotiation script alone was worth it. I read it basically verbatim and got $30k more.”
Fair questions
Is this resume writing?
No. We fix the underlying story; the resume falls out of that in an afternoon.
What if I'm not actively looking?
Best time to start. We build the narrative before you need it, on nobody's deadline.
Do you work with new grads?
Rarely. The program assumes four or more years of work worth narrating. The intro call will tell us fast.
See one that feels close?
Tell us which theme resonated and what you’d want different. We’ll take it from there.
Get started