MattMacLeanPhoto

As a kid, I was an athlete. That was how I defined myself and I was immersed within that passion for two decades. Not being blessed with strong decorating skills, my walls in my childhood bedroom were completely covered with a collage of amazing images of other athletes from Sports Illustrated, meticulously (sometimes) cut from the magazine. As the years passed, the knee surgeries accumulated, and my dreams of being a pro athlete faded. First went basketball, my college career ending really before it began, and then baseball ended two years later. The dream has changed a bit...now, instead of being in front of the camera on the field of play, I want to be behind it, capturing the drama, action, and personalities in the game. Someday, maybe my images will be taped to some bedroom wall of an aspiring athlete. I love sports and I love photography. Squish them together and you get bacon.

I have a picture hanging on my dining room wall shot by one of my father's best friends. The three of us were fly fishing on the Yaak River in Northwest Montana when I was around 12 or 13 years old. Tom climbed the bank of the river to a bridge and took an image of my father and me standing knee deep in the Yaak - I was in the middle of a cast trying to perfectly place the fly under a low branch by the edge of the river. My father stood behind me with his rod and reel at his side, watching me without my knowledge, quietly supporting me, hoping for my success, but there if I should need a hand...at the time, I thought he was just fishing the other side.

This picture was given to me the day after my father's funeral in 2009. I look at it every day and it is truly an important image to me.

That is why I shoot portraits. If I can somehow capture what Tom did that day in Montana for someone else, then I will have been successful...

Thanks for stopping by!
-Matt