We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful TJ Thorne. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with TJ below.

TJ, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

From the time I was a kid, I was always taking risks. Growing up in a rural area meant that my childhood was filled with climbing trees, riding dirt bikes, jumping off of roofs, and as I grew older, skateboarding, snowboarding, and playing ice hockey. After I graduated high school I left my hometown just outside of Pittsburgh, PA to move to Portland, OR. I loaded up my Honda Civic and pulled a U-haul 2,500 miles to a place that I had never been and knew no one. I didn’t even secure a place to live until halfway into my journey.

Making that move was the best decision I have ever made. I “found” myself out west and wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t taken that risk of driving into the sunset, my future ahead of me, and hoping that the net would appear if I needed it.

In my more recent years, the risk of quitting my job of 16 years to invest in myself and be a full time artist has been the hardest job that I’ve ever had, but also the most rewarding and there is nothing else that I would rather be doing.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My first career out of high school was in the culinary/restaurant industry. Part of my training required a four year apprenticeship, for which I had to submit a workbook full of photos of food and recipes that I made on the job. I had a completely manual film camera from high school, but I wanted something a bit more capable for such a serious endeavor so I went out and spent $300 on a camera, which to me back then was a lot of money. With having to use the camera so frequently, I quickly fell in love with the medium and started to take my camera everywhere I went. With photographing punk rock shows as well as my friends skateboarding and snowboarding, I loved the process of trying to fit the story in a 3:2 frame and hopefully capturing that “decisive moment”.

When I moved to the Pacific Northwest, my camera came with me on my hikes and camping trips. After over 20 years of experience in the restaurant industry, the heavy labor, long hours, stress, and low pay started to wear on me. With my hiking and photography becoming more and more a part of my life, I decided to step out of my role in kitchen management, take a lower-tier job, and give myself a five year goal of being a full-time artist and nature photographer. I beat the goal by two years.

In the photography industry I am known for my creative use of different kinds of light, my unique style, and my water abstracts, of which I just published my first monograph of. This book has been a dream of mine for at least five years. Ebb and Flow contains 100 abstract photos of water and chronicles the beginning of my journey into photographing the subject in every way that I can imagine, something which has helped me to battle my mental health struggles and find sobriety from alcohol.

I make most of my living by teaching nature photography and creative vision workshops across various locations along the West Coast. Clients who sign up for my classes typically want to learn new ways of interacting with the landscape through their camera, get in touch with their inner artist, and produce work that is personally significant. I also do speaking engagements, sell eBooks and other educational materials, and offer fine art prints.

With my past in the hospitality industry, I am passionate about my customer service as I help clients navigate their creative journey and grow not just as photographers, but also as people.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I am fortunate to live in a place with so much abundant, diverse, and easily accessible nature. With having grown up with a forest in my back yard, nature was just a part of my life. Once I moved to the city and started dealing with the stresses and responsibilities of adulthood, the Columbia River Gorge, a quick 35 minute drive from my home, became my playground. I found comfort in the moss draped trees and various drainages, most of which had picturesque waterfalls along them, perfect places to get away from it all and get lost in the flowing water and dancing light within my viewfinder.

During my battle with alcohol and finding sobriety, it was the gorge that I went to. I knew that when I was in the gorge, that I was safe. Everything was fine when I was standing waist deep in a creek. Nothing else in the world mattered at that time. Not my drinking problem, not my bills, or work, or emails, or standing in line, or sitting in traffic, or any of the other things that life had become. When I was photographing, I was at peace.

Naturally, the gorge was the first place that I had done my photography workshops. I knew it intimately and with the plethora of fairytale scenes, one could spend numerous days teaching photography there. But right after I put in my two week notice at my long-term job, the place where I earned 90% of my photography income and a place that was so deeply special to me caught on fire due to careless use of fireworks. My heart broke as I saw ashes of a place so dear and important to me fall from the sky and cover my car. At first I figured that it would only be an isolated area, but every morning I woke up to news of yet another drainage being consumed by the fire. By the time that it had been contained, 50,000 acres of some of the most beautiful land that Oregon had to offer had been burned.

I was scared. I was devastated. I didn’t know how I was going to pay my bills. I always knew that it was a bad idea to build my business one a one-legged table of income, but I just hadn’t diversified my revenue streams yet. But with passion, persistence, and patience (as well as a few odd jobs here and there to make ends meet), I was able to expand my business into other locations over the next couple of years and was finally getting to a point of comfort when covid hit and I had to cancel/refund all of my pending classes.

I was once again forced to scramble and diversify, ultimately taking on some of the remote speaking/presentation opportunities that were born from covid and I created my first eBook, which did exceedingly well and was the one thing that really helped me make financially it through the pandemic.

With the pandemic more or less behind us, my business is doing better than ever and I am continuing to invest in myself and my business. I finally feel like a good business owner and my creative energy has never been higher nor as defined and clear as it is now.

I am excited to finish building my new products and ideas out.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Authenticity, vulnerability, and introspection. I frequently talk about my mental health and addiction issues, which many people can relate to. The tide has been shifting lately and there seems to be more and more of a focus on mental health, but I am not afraid to talk about my struggles and to a lot of people it’s a breath of fresh air to know that someone else feels the way they feel.

Those attributes combined with my experience, my creative philosophy, and my unique way of seeing seem to have helped me to build my reputation and brand in the industry.       

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tjthornephotography.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjthorne_photography
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tjthornephotography/
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/tj-thorne-4784a1b0/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/tjthorne_photo