I grew up around storytellers. My mom loved sharing a play-by-play of her day and taking photos on her Minolta X-570. My dad loved telling lengthy stories with humor punctuating every twist and turn. Though they separated when I was 3, I picked up both of the superpowers — explaining everything in great detail, while also finding the humor in it.
It took me a few decades to learn to shorten some of my stories, but I think going to the University of Nevada, Reno School of Journalism, then learning when friends and family had checked out, helped me keep things brief.
The early years
In college, I worked for The Nevada Sagebrush newspaper. It was a perfect fit. I started as the Arts & Entertainment editor, writing reviews about music and trends. Toward the end of my first year, I picked up the paper’s camera (a Nikon D70) and started photographing concerts. I later designed a few covers for my section to help pick up slack when I had ideas. The following year I grew into the Design Editor position and moved into visual storytelling. I won several Designer of the Year and related awards by the Student Society of News Design.
As the designer editor for two years, I fell in love with newspaper design and the photography that often went with it. In particular, I loved conceptual cover designs that required me to do something fancy. In my second year, I redesigned the newspaper into a more modern look. I graduated and started my first job at Swift Communications, where I eventually became a newspaper designer again and redesigned all their newspapers as well. They still look the same today.
I started my own blog, DrinkableReno.com in 2014, which parlayed into the City Life Reporter at the Reno Gazette Journal. For the most part, I wrote and photographed my own stories, as a photojournalist, because I enjoyed doing both.
While I had always been a fan of off-camera flash, I mostly stuck to photojournalism and some portrait work over the years, using flash to help illuminate photos but shied away from using them more creatively. I dreamed of the flashy beautiful magazine work, but stuck with the breaking news, the storytelling, and the people most of the time.
It wasn’t until 2022, when I joined my wife at Flanz Media (formerly Flanz Writes) that I went full blast on the studio portrait work. I worked through the Professional Photographers of America Certified Professional Photographer class, passed the knowledge test, completed the live image evaluation, and was awarded my certification in early 2023.
My first job was to create creative portraits of Public Relations Society of America Silver Spike winners in early 2023. They were all creative, fun, and different. And that’s what I love to do.
Mike Higdon Photography unfurls
That’s what led me here, to create a new brand, Mike Higdon Photography. I’m no stranger to branding myself, but it has become more uncomfortable as I get older and as social media becomes less enjoyable overall. Nonetheless, here we are and once I get an exciting idea, I can’t stop.
While working at Flanz Media, I received a lot of inquiries for separate photography, without doing much marketing. And that’s wonderful. So now it’s time to make it official, and lean into the skills that brought me this far. To be clear, I’m still the co-owner and Chief Storytelling Officer at Flanz Media, but this is kind of like a spinoff business.
So now I’m officially doing portrait work and commercial photography for individuals, organizations, companies, and institutions.
My focus is on headshots, portraits, storytelling, commercial and marketing/advertising with eye toward realism and photojournalism, but often with lighting (all of which I’ll breakdown more in subsequent articles). I’m also doing limited events and product photography.
