About
Hi, I'm Storm.
Taken By Storm started because I kept watching the same thing happen. Organizations do real work, and then it vanishes. The program runs, the event ends, the season closes, and there is almost nothing left to show for it. No proof for a funder. Nothing for the site. Nothing to send the people who were in the room.
I do not think that is a small problem. Documentation is how work gets funded again, hired again, and remembered accurately. So I built this practice around being the person who shows up.
How I shoot
I do not run people through poses. I read the room, find the light, and stay out of the way until the thing happens.
What I am usually watching for is the moment right before or right after the one everybody planned. The handshake is fine. The look on someone's face while they are waiting to be introduced is better. Clients tell me the galleries look like the day actually felt, and that is the entire goal.
I also shoot fast and quietly. If you did not notice I was working the room, I did it right.
Why behind the scenes
It is my favorite thing to shoot and I think it is the most undervalued.
Everybody wants the photograph of the ribbon getting cut. Almost nobody thinks about the two hours before, when volunteers are setting up chairs and the director is fixing a name card that spelled somebody wrong. That is usually where the story is, and it is almost always the part that makes people feel something when they see it six months later.
Why sports
Because I love it. Friday nights, sidelines, fourth quarter, the walk off the field.
I have shot on select assignment for Dave Campbell's Texas Football and I hold a Dallas ISD media pass. I put in for games because I want to be there. Sports coverage for programs and clubs is a real part of the practice now, and the published side of it lives at Field Notes.
The other thing I do
I also run Chronicle House, a digital architecture practice that builds infrastructure, learning, and tools for programs and businesses. Separate company, separate work.
I mention it because it makes me better at this one. I spend a lot of time on the other side of the photograph, building the platforms and communications systems that images end up inside. So when a marketing director tells me what they need, I already know what their CMS is going to do to a horizontal crop and what their calendar looks like in Q3.
If you came here looking for that work, it lives at chroniclehouse.co.
On bigger jobs
Taken By Storm is my practice and I am on every job I book. For multi-day events, multi-room programming, or anything where two angles are genuinely required, I bring in a second shooter I have worked with and trust, and I stay on primary coverage. You will know who is on your event before the day of, every time.