A partial history of Amos Morgan Photography

My full name is Amos Patrick Morgan.  I was born in central Chile in February of 1979.  This sounds more exotic than I feel it is as I was born to Peace Core parents of various European heritage and don’t remember a day of it.  Oh, and my Spanish is almost non-existant.  But, I still like to mention it causally and leave the room before anyone starts speaking Spanish to me.  This faux-extoticness is a theme for me, as much of my family has been living in Hawaii dating back almost 200 years and I have not one native Hawaiian cell in my body.  I have lived in the Northwest most of my life and grew up on an Island called Whidbey.  I am very grateful for my upbringing, especially considering my parents literally were offered $1000 in exchange for their gringo baby by a local in some small Chilean town.  I most certainly would have grown up differently, probably with a similar experience to Steve Martin’s character in The Jerk.

I grew up around photography with a darkroom in the basement.  I got my own camera in high school and received quite a few accolades at a young age.  This gave me motivation to look at photo schools across the country.  After being discouraged by talking to many an artist with various arts degrees and school debt I decided I would go to the Commercial Photography Program at Seattle Central Community College.  It was the only school I looked at that was teaching business, as well as a little thing they were calling Digital Photography and Photoshop.  And still the program spent an entire year shooting 4×5 sheet film on view cameras (I really liked this program a lot).

After school I started assisting.  About a year and half later I had the very fortunate opportunity to be a second shooter and full time assistant at Getty Images working under Ryan McVay.  Many, many photoshoots were had and a whole bunch of traveling ensued.  Through Getty I believe I was a part of shooting every subject known to man and women, except space travel, which is up and coming, but wasn’t super fashionable at the time.  This experience really helped me when I left Getty and began forging my own business.  Because Seattle is a relatively small market, I’ve had to shoot many different things many different ways and always felt comfortable doing that.

Years later I am still fortunate to have a variety of clients.  But now most of my shoots involve photographing real people on location which is what I enjoy the most.  New places and new faces almost always make me smile and give me a sense of wonderment as I learn about all the different paths we choose to take and lives we choose to live.  This brings me joy and a vast appreciation for this world and the people who are a part of it.

Did I mention I really love to collaborate on the creation of beautiful images along the way?  Well I do and it’s in a way that’s hard to explain, but I think most people can understand.  I also like music, a lot.  This is a good topic of conversation along with movies and some tv shows.  I like outdoors and sports and athletic activity.  I can enjoy politics.  Although I become frustrated when people have strong opinions regarding the subject, but refuse to be active in their own communities.  I really like animals (reasonably) and food, sometimes they are one and the same.  I also like the color green which is good because I live in the Evergreen State.  And now it seems I enjoy writing, which makes sense because English was my second best subject in school.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and I sincerely hope this day finds you well.