Meet Alyson
The girl behind the camera
My Story.
My journey into photography started unexpectedly and almost by accident. I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska and started out my young adult life as an aspiring singer/dancer/actor, with dreams of a career in musical theatre. That dream took me all the way to New York City at the age of 19, where I moved to continue my dance training and begin the arduous process of auditioning in the professional theatre world. Being a 19 year old girl from Nebraska living in New York City was an adventure, to say the least! I have many stories about my first apartment in Harlem, living through the summers with no air conditioning, working in restaurants in Times Square to pay my rent, and accidentally getting on the wrong subway and ending up in Jamaica, Queens at 2:30 am.
Along the way I started playing around with my parent’s 4 megapixel point and shoot camera, and before I knew it I had multiple actor friends asking me to take their headshots. Within two years of picking up that little camera, my business had grown to the point where I had to make a decision whether to continue pursuing theater, or devote myself completely to photography. I chose photography, and now more than a decade later I haven’t looked back!
When I first started out I was mainly shooting actor's headshots, but eventually I discovered how FUN high school seniors are, and that has now become a primary focus of my business. I currently work in both my home state of Nebraska, and in New York City, where I photograph high school seniors from across the nation, as well as professional dancers and actors, and commercial lifestyle and branding photography.
My work has been published by Dance Magazine and Senior Style Guide Magazine, and featured online at Oprah.com, Seniorologie, Modern Senior, and Lemonade and Lenses. In 2014 I was honored to be named one of the top 100 senior photographers in the nation by Senior Style Guide, and in 2015 I was the first place winner in the senior category of the Lemonade and Lenses International Image Competition. Besides photography, I love cooking, reading, playing piano, shopping, coffee, stalking dogs on instagram, rainy days, wandering city streets, watching Netflix, and hanging out with my dog, Chloe.
These are a few of my favorite things:
Weird looking dogs
Stephen Sondheim musicals
Strong coffee
Walt Whitman poems
Overthinking
Kalamata Olives
Fonts
New York City in the rain
Wildflowers