About Derrick

Derrick has always enjoyed being outdoors and exploring places he's never been. The lure of what's around the corner, or over the next ridge has always been a powerful draw. Starting in 2008 or so, Derrick started dabbling in photography, reading books and surfing websites that simplified the process and explained just what makes a good picture - kenrockwell.com - and that early foray into learning how to take great images has stuck with him over the last fifteen years. While it certainly does help to become technically proficient with your equipment, Derrick believes it's more important to learn how to read light, shadow, texture, and color - and how your camera reads those things - than to take an absolutely perfect picture that's technically correct of an absolutely boring scene. In 2012, Derrick embarked on a project to document the Texas frontier forts that ran in a line from Jacksboro to Menard, exploring the 19th century Texas frontier, which, in many ways is still quite far away from civilization. In 2014, that work was published by Abilene Christian University in a coffee table book. Since that time, Derrick has been featured in solo shows in Mesquite, Farmers Branch, Lewisville, Sanger and locally at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum. Favorite haunts to explore are the Big Bend region, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, New Mexico and locally back deep into the Piney Woods. Derrick is the Director at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum and Republic of Texas Presidential Library. He's been married to his lovely wife Leslie for over 25 years and they live in Huntsville, Texas with their 3 dogs.