Daily Inspiration: Meet Nathan McDaniel

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nathan McDaniel

Hi Nathan, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Thank you so much for the opportunity to meet with you and introduce myself. I’m Nathan, an I.T. guy by trade, and an entrepreneur and photographer in my spare time. I’ve lived my entire life in the Denver Metro area and enjoy calling Colorado home.

I first started developing an interest in photography in grade school. I remember my 6th grade class even had a darkroom built into it and absolutely loved being in there developing film. It was amazing to me how you could use a camera to capture a moment and transform it into an actual image, freezing a moment in time. I continued with photography through high school, learning more traditional technique and spent even more time in the darkroom there. After high school, I really didn’t have a lot of direction, bouncing around from job to job, until I landed at at a job as a photographer for Olan Mills Portrait Studios. It was such a great experience being behind the camera and capturing memories for people, little one’s smiles. Having a number of my photos selected for merit awards, even winning Photographer of the Year one time, I went onto managing my own Olan Mills studio for a time until Olan Mills started closing studios amid the end of the studio era. From there I ended up working at what used to be Wolff Camera. Originally I started in the photo lab back to developing film on a commercial level this time before I ultimately moved into camera sales. Being in camera sales, I constantly got to play with the latest and greatest in camera technology and watched as the world went from film to the start of the digital era. Working at Wolff Camera is also where I bought my first high end camera and started to really develop a love for photography. I absolutely loved doing landscape photography and taking photos of my little family.

Being a young husband and father, we struggled financially at times and at one point our struggles were so great that I ended up selling off all of my camera gear to support my family and thus my photography hiatus began. I often missed doing photography however I rarely spoke of it. It wasn’t until around 2015 when I had the opportunity to have a camera in my hands again that I realized just how much I missed that part of me and my life. It was then that I turned to my wife and said that I really did miss it and wanted to get back into doing that. Without hesitation, my ever supportive wife said, “I’ve been waiting for you to say that” and I started shopping for a new starter camera. In 2016, I launched Nathan McDaniel Photography, specializing in landscape photos and freelance portraiture and I’ve not looked back since.

In late 2017, a friend of mine at the place I work who also does photography, introduced me to Milky Way and nighttime photography. I have such an incredible love of space that this really interested me so we went out to shoot the Milky Way one night and I was instantly hooked and my love of astrophotography was born. Astrophotography is such an amazing, yet highly addictive subject. I knew there was more to the night sky than just the Milky Way and stars and I wanted to photograph that just as much as anything else so I ventured into deep space photography as well and have two telescopes that are dedicated strictly to imaging the night sky and deep space objects such as galaxies and nebulas.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I would absolutely love to say that it had been a smooth road however I think that is the farthest thing from the truth. The reality is that most of my journey has been a struggle. I mentioned earlier that, especially in high school, I lacked direction and that really has to do with the loss of my mother when I was only 14 years old. Not only did I lose my mother, I lost my best friend, and the one person at the time that I could confide anything in. After my mom passed, I went to live with my grandmother (my mom’s mother) who was not only struggling with the loss of her daughter but having to basically become a mom all over again to teenagers overnight. Even though I was so grateful that she took me in, we didn’t always see eye to eye and I rebelled in a major way. I turned to substances to help me cope and became a person that I couldn’t even recognize for quite a few years, made more than my fair share of poor decisions and didn’t like the person I was turning into.

I continued to struggle and lived life without direction until late 1997 when I met my now wife and we quickly got pregnant with our daughter. This was a major wake up call to me and suddenly my life seemed to provide me with a direction to head. Husband and father. We were very young parents and I without any type of skill or anything beyond a high school education. We often struggled financially being such young parents but we never stopped and never gave up. At times I had to work 2 to 3 jobs for us just to survive and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat if I had to.

It was between the time of our daughter being born, and our son 3 years later that I had gotten into photography and worked for Olan Mills and Wolff Camera. It was a little while after our son came along though that we started to struggle financially again which lead me to selling off all of my camera gear so we could survive and my photography hiatus began. As much as I loved photography, I loved my family more and did what I had to do to support them at that time in our lives.

It was around the mid 2000’s when I was working a job that I didn’t really love that I realized there was greater things in store for me. I decided it was time for me to stop messing around with jobs that were going nowhere and I went to college to study I.T. and something that could become more career based, although this came with it’s own set of struggles, working full time, going to school full time at night, and trying to be a full time husband and father. There’s only so much time in the day however, somehow, we made it work and I eventually went on to get my Masters in I.T.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Mostly I specialize in landscape and astrophotography, however I do a little bit of everything from senior photo shoots to weddings and more. If I were to say that I was known for anything it would certainly be my landscapes and Milky Way photos. To date, I would say that from my photography I am most proud of being the featured artist in a medical office building down in Durango. I have about 25-30 pieces of my work on permanent display down there as well as a couple other office buildings down in south Denver.

There are so many fabulous photographers out there. I like to study their work, their techniques, their inspirations. I try to learn from each photo that I see and how I can continuously work to improve my own art. I feel like I am coming into my own style and place as a photographer but also style and self acceptance as a person.

I’d say what sets me apart from others is my passion and adoration of space , combined with photography, has allowed me to interact with the Universe in new ways. In ways it has also led me to exploring my own spirituality more and learning about parts of the Universe that we cannot see.

The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Regardless of how they’re created, create those memories and cherish the moments you get with loved ones. If there is something you wish to say to someone, say it. Our time here is limited and we need to take advantage of each opportunity that we are provided.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nathanmcdanielphotography.com
• Other: https://bsky.app/profile/nathan113.bsky.social

Image Credits
Photos by Nathan McDaniel