Hi. My name is Tyson Sommer. I’m the owner and chief photographer of Drag the Shutter Photography. As you can see from my image above, I’m a pretty quirky guy. ‘Tis true, but I’m also very easy to get along with. I just like to have fun in life.
I prefer to deviate from the status quo when pursuing my creative endeavors when I can. My goal is to deliver truly memorable images from your business event, family event, youth sporting event, vacation, proposal or performance. I want to tell your story. Capture the moments. The laughs. The dances. The crowds. The holiday parties. The presentations. The new releases. The promotions. The retirements. The touchdowns. The plies. The Smith grinds and varial kickflips. The power chords. The stage lights. The “YES!”-es. The essence of whatever event you want to remember for years to come. I want to tell your story with a bit of a creative flair (though of course I can do status quo event images too if that’s what you want). When you look back at the moments I’ve captured through my lens, I want to bring you right back into the event. I don’t want you to fell like you’re just thumbing through some snapshots. I want you to feel like you went back in time and were experiencing it all over again.
As for my story in this line of work, I got started in photography back in about 1999. As a network engineer, I would regularly travel all over the country. I’d usually do so by myself. I needed something to do! That happened to be right around the time when digital cameras started to take decent photos. My first camera wasn’t all that great. It was one of those original, clunky Kodak DC50s. I used that for a year or so, then decided to step it up a notch. Being a techie, I decided to take a risk and buy a dozen broken cameras off of eBay in hopes that I could fix a couple of them so I’d have something to do on my trips. My risk was rewarded. I was able to fix several of the cameras and sell them to get all of my money back, and was able to turn two of the most expensive broken cameras in the lot into one fully functional camera for myself. It was a Casio QV3000EX. I believe they were close to $1000 back then, and, with a little work, I essentially got one for free.
Well, I quickly realized that this camera had all sorts of features that I hadn’t a clue about. Things like “f-stop,” “ISO,” and “white balance.” What the what now?! I figured I might as well put my engineer brain to work and figure it out. I did, and I quickly got hooked. I honed my skills during my travels, and before I knew it, people started asking me to take photos for them. They even started paying me for it! A few years later, I enrolled in the Photography Institute. I graduated with a Diploma of Professional Photography from The Photography Institute, and decided to make it a business. Over time, I realized that I really had a knack for photographing events, so here I am! Ready to capture the moments you want to preserve. Let’s do this!
–Tyson Sommer
