RenegadePhotography

Renegade

Photography · Fargo, North Dakota

Senior portraits and theater production photography.
Twenty years in, still no two sessions alike.

EVE-019Dancer, powder and graffiti, one hard light.

How this started

Twenty years in

A hundred-dollar camera
from a pawn shop.

I went to school for music education and left in my junior year to start a winter drum line in Fargo. I ran it for about ten years. We had no budget, so I wore every hat — including photographer. The line needed stock images for brochures and a website, so I went to a pawn shop, bought a camera for a hundred bucks, and started shooting.

People saw those pictures and asked me to shoot their weddings. Then their seniors. It went from there.

I tend to do photography from a creative standpoint rather than a business standpoint. I’m fairly good at the creative side and terrible at the business side.

Jason Siebels

That’s the honest reason I’m still doing this. Every show is a different problem and every senior comes in with a different story. The day that stops being true, I’ll go find something else to do.

Seniors

Bring the thing
you actually do.

Most sessions start as a conversation. You tell me about the three activities you’re in and we find a way to put them in one picture. It’s your last year of high school — the photographs should be about what you spent it doing.

Ezra playing cello on a stool in a snow-covered alley, lit by a single strobe against a graffiti wall.
EZRA-003 Ezra · Fargo
Eve mid-leap in front of a graffiti wall, clouds of red and grey powder bursting around her.
EVE-019 Eve · Fargo
Oksana standing against a wall of blue and magenta graffiti, lit from the side in late daylight.
OKSANA-008 Oksana · Fargo
Tara leaning on the banister of a grand wooden staircase, lit warm against the dark hall behind her.
TARA-008 Tara · Fargo
Avery playing violin in a narrow brick alley, lit soft against the pale wall behind her.
AVERY-016 Avery · Fargo
A senior sitting on a sidewalk against a wooden fence covered in ivy, backlit by late afternoon sun.
SR-002 Senior session · late light
Taylor leaning in a storefront doorway in a purple knit sweater, lit by winter daylight coming through the glass.
TAYLOR-007 Taylor · Fargo

One session Ryan

Ryan skis and he skates, so that’s what the session was about. The studio and alley frames are in there too — everybody wants a few of those — but the reason to book an afternoon is the other ones.

Ryan in black and white holding a pair of brightly painted skis across his shoulders, the skis left in full colour against a black background.
RYAN-001 The skis, in colour
Ryan seated on a stool in a white shirt against a mottled backdrop, looking down, in black and white.
RYAN-002 Studio
Ryan seated on iron steps beside potted plants and a brick wall, in black and white.
RYAN-006 Fire escape
Ryan sitting on a folding chair against a weathered brick wall, hands clasped, in black and white.
RYAN-008 Alley, chair
Ryan mid-air on inline skates above the lip of a concrete bowl, a brick building and blue sky behind him.
RYAN-009 The park
Ryan standing on a parking ramp roof in inline skates holding his helmet, the downtown skyline behind him, in black and white.
RYAN-010 Rooftop, helmet down
Ryan leaning on a concrete ledge against a brick wall in daylight, smiling at the camera.
RYAN-007 The one for the wall

LOG Things we have actually done

  • Thirty-six outfits in three hours.
  • A swimmer, shot underwater.
  • A rider in a full prom dress, out on the farm.
  • A kid who baked pies every year for Pi Day, photographed from underneath the dough.

Theater & production

TECH RUN → HOUSE

The poster has to exist
before the house opens.

I shoot the tech run, two or three days out — costumes up, lights set, everything finally in place. Then it gets compressed. Opening night is usually within twenty-four hours of the shoot. Sometimes eight.

  1. D−3Tech runCostumes, lights, full set. The first night it looks like the show.
  2. D−3ShootThe whole run, stage lit, no second takes.
  3. D−2BuildSelects, retouch, composite. About sixty hours of work inside four days.
  4. D−0House opensPoster, program, promo and box office art, delivered.

It’s really two jobs. The key art gets built — composites, miniatures, practical effects, whatever the concept needs — and it has to exist early enough to sell tickets. Then I shoot the run.

I’ve shot the same show three times and there’s still always something new to grab onto. That’s the part I do this for.

Six performers in green-lit costumes covered in banknotes, gathered under a single overhead beam with the WILLKOMMEN bulbs glowing behind them.

House lights down.

Move the light across the frame.

CAB-025 · Cabaret

Production stills

Cabaret

Two jobs on one show: build the key art early enough to sell tickets, then shoot the run. Opened Monday, closed Sunday, edited overnight in between.

Credit The Summer Arts Intensive · Sheyenne Theater, West Fargo · July 27 – August 2, 2026

The Cabaret one-sheet: a performer in a pink wig raising a hat on a footlit stage, guard towers and barbed wire behind her, the title in bulb-lit marquee letters below.
POSTER-01 One-sheet

Key art

Built, not found.

Every background element in this is a miniature. A friend 3D-printed a set of little figures that I painted and lit, and I built the wall behind them out of styrofoam and scrap wood. All of it was shot separately and composited.

Then the same art gets cut for whatever the theater needs it on — the lobby one-sheet, a square for social, sixteen-by-nine for screens, a web banner.

The same Cabaret key art cropped square for social, the Summer Arts Intensive logo above the title.
POSTER-02 Square · social
The Cabaret key art laid out sixteen-by-nine, title and dates stacked left, the dancer and guard towers right.
BANNER-02 Sixteen-by-nine · screens
A wide Cabaret web banner: two performers back to back holding comedy and tragedy masks, the bulb-lit title to their right.
BANNER-01 Web banner

Stills The show as it ran

The full company posed on the stage steps with fingers to their lips, the lit WILLKOMMEN marquee spanning the wall behind them.
CAB-021 Willkommen — the company
A performer lifted in her partner's arms beneath a single overhead spot, the beam visible in the haze.
CAB-002 A lift, one beam
Two performers in striped costume framing their faces with gloved hands under a cool blue wash, the marquee dim behind them.
CAB-010 Two-shot, blue
Banknotes thrown from a ladder scatter through green light as the company scrambles for them.
CAB-027 Money, falling
A performer in a red dress on her knees downstage, head back mid-note, the company bent low behind her in violet light.
CAB-014 Red dress, downstage
A couple sitting together on a brass bed in warm tungsten light, away from the club.
CAB-018 The warm half of the show
The Emcee in a red waistcoat kneeling beside a performer in a gorilla costume and red tutu, lit magenta.
CAB-031 The Emcee, and the gorilla
The whole company caught mid-jump in overalls and flowered hats, arms flung wide beneath the marquee.
CAB-012 The company, airborne

Production stills

Alice in Wonderland Jr.

Different room, same clock. A youth cast on a hard-candy light plot — purple wash, painted mushrooms, and a stage full of principals and ensemble who all need to be findable in the gallery afterwards.

The full youth company crowded around the tea-party table under a purple wash, the Mad Hatter standing centre.
AIW-002 The long table
The Queen of Hearts in red mid-shout, pointing offstage, two playing-card guards seated below her.
AIW-004 The Queen, and two cards
Alice in a blue pinafore between two hatted characters, the ensemble seated on painted mushroom steps behind.
AIW-001 Alice, and the hats
Three performers in matching Alice pinafores and blonde wigs standing shoulder to shoulder downstage.
AIW-005 Three Alices
The tea-party scene washed in magenta, the company laughing around the table.
AIW-003 Tea party, magenta

Archive

Fifteen years of weddings.
Retired in 2020.

Two hundred–some weddings and the engagements that came with them. I’m not booking these anymore — I ran out of new things to say about a wedding cake. The work stays up because it’s still good work.

Tasha kissing Blake on the cheek in front of a weathered white and red barn door.
Tasha + Blake · Rogers, MN
Stephanie and Eric nose to nose in a prairie field, silhouetted against a bright overcast sky with a windmill behind them.
Stephanie + Eric · Fargo
Sarah resting her head on August's shoulder in a field of tall grass at golden hour.
Sarah + August · Fargo
Karen and Taylor kissing on a downtown rooftop with an art deco tower behind them.
Karen + Taylor · Fargo
Amy and Dustin holding hands, walking away through heavy falling snow in a park.
Amy + Dustin · Fargo
Jodine in profile silhouette against an amber sunset, hands under her pregnant belly.
Jodine · maternity
Chugs, a red merle Australian shepherd, sitting on a wooden crate against a mottled grey studio backdrop.
Chugs · studio

Booking

FARGO–MOORHEAD

If you like the work,
here’s how to reach me.

Phone
(701) 555-0000 PLACEHOLDER
Based
Fargo, North Dakota
Range
About ninety minutes out. Farther if the shoot’s worth it.
Booking
Seniors, theater productions, commercial, the occasional family.
Not booking
Weddings. Retired in 2020.

INQUIRY Tell me what you’re shooting and roughly when.