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Biography

Ashland grew up in Southeast Virginia around the resort area of Virginia Beach. He began studying music and the arts at the age of three and appeared in his first show that same year. Ashland went on to accompany his first show on piano by the age of five, win the first of several art accolades (in clay sculpture and oil painting) by the age of six, have his first short story published and win his first literary award by the age of nine, have his first original stage show produced by eleven, and composed his first original piece for piano by fourteen. Ashland also began doing SFX and beauty make-up for stage & film at this same time and wrote, directed and produced his first film at sixteen. By the time he was eighteen, Ashland had appeared in over fifty stage, TV, and film productions and operated several entertainment businesses. The arts were always an important part of his life.

Ashland was always very drawn to cameras and to images they produced as more than just family memories. His first camera was given to him in the early 80's; a Polaroid One-Shot 600. He would document stage productions and family gatherings in a very unique style different from most Polaroid users. He would occasionally use his father's Pentax fully manual 35mm camera until the Minolta fully automatic consumer line dropped in the 1980s. Although not his own, he got quite the use out of it. Spending time with his father on trips across the United States and a lot of time at family mountain, country, and beach properties trained him organically to appreciate nature and landscapes and capture them through the lens.

Ashland experienced great loss at a young age when his father died when he was just thirteen years old, and it was followed by the loss of several close family members and friends over the next several years. He feels that remaining loyal to art kept him truly alive and these unfortunate circumstances fuels a drive, a passion, and an emotion in all aspects of art that shines through in his work on stage or behind the camera. People may not always like it, may not always understand it, may not always approve of it, but you can't deny his work isn't filled with those elements. "It always feels good to have your work appreciated, or to offer fulfillment to someone else. But my art is for me, my fulfillment. I can just hope that you appreciate the choices I make."

Ashland moved to Central Florida in 1996 and began to work for the Walt Disney Company and shortly thereafter Universal Studios Florida. Performance and production was still his main focus even as attended school for Film and Entertainment Business. Having felt he had accomplished the most he could in the area, Ashland picked up and moved overnight to Chicago where he was lucky enough to be accepted into the local scene almost immediately with a full slate of productions his first year. It was at this time that he moved to New York City when he decided to take a couple of years off from life and travel the U.S. and the World.

Up until this point Ashland was using only a Kodak point-and-shoot consumer camera out in nature and during his travels and didn't really think of photography as anything more than a casual hobby. His first summer in NYC, he casually responded to an ad on Craigslist which quickly resulted in his first solo show at the Doron Brauhnstein Gallery on the Lower East Side. This sparked a new interest and Ashland considered the possibility of pursuing photography as more than a hobby. Soon thereafter, Ashland accepted $50 to shoot a new model visiting NYC from Pennsylvania and that was the beginning of a whole new career.

In early 2008, Ashland added Atlanta to the cities he called home, bought a new Canon DSLR, and continued to travel and expand his business. By this time he had a solid fan base on MySpace, steady sales on his online store at Zazzle, and worked in places such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Paris, London, Dublin, Costa Rica, Venice, Moscow and Munich. Ashland went to spend the first week of August in Africa & South Africa and upon return to the U.S. went to visit family in Orlando where he became very ill. Being hospitalized for several weeks with an unknown prognosis and not entirely expected to live, the life Ashland had been building quickly came crashing down. A few months later he regained his strength and his health, and began to reacclimate to life in Orlando full steam ahead. Ashland took this new blip on the radar as fuel for the fire and another reason to keep moving forward and doesn't plan on looking back.

Ashland looks forward to many more years of development, collaboration, creativity, and art. "There's lots to learn, lots to see, and lots to do, all I can do is hope you'll want to take part in the journey."