Most photographers will tell you about the moment they fell in love with light. Mine came after more than twenty years in Army Artillery; after the noise, after the precision, after the discipline of leading soldiers.

When I retired as a First Sergeant from the Utah Army National Guard, I traded my M109 Paladin cannon for a Canon DSLR and headed into the wild places that had always been in the background of a military life spent across the American West.

What I found was that the skills were more portable than I expected. Patience. Composition. Timing. Knowing the terrain. Reading conditions before anyone else does. A sniper waits for the shot. So does a nature photographer.

Today I create limited edition fine art photography from wild places, mountain ranges, high deserts, and remote wildlife habitats, crafted into museum quality metal and acrylic prints for collectors who want artwork that carries genuine weight.

I don’t photograph places simply because they’re beautiful. I photograph the rare moments when light, atmosphere, weather, and landscape come together in ways that may never happen again. Those moments can’t be manufactured or repeated. They can only be recognized by someone willing to wait.

Photography first hinted at its place in my life during my deployment to Iraq, when an image I made of a mosque in Baghdad was published in The New York Times’ online soldier section. Looking back, it was an early sign that the camera would eventually become more than a way to document where I’d been.

The deeper story, however, began years earlier.

I lost my father as a toddler. Growing up, I never knew he had been an artist until I discovered a collection of his oil paintings and a mural he had painted on my grandmother’s wall. It was like meeting him for the first time. In those paintings I recognized an appreciation for composition, light, and form that somehow felt familiar.

That discovery inspired me to spend several years exploring oil painting myself. Although photography ultimately became my medium, painting taught me to slow down, to study light, and to think about composition as an artist rather than simply recording a scene. Those lessons remain part of every photograph I create.

My career as a software engineer added another dimension. It trained me to analyze systems, solve problems, and anticipate change. Behind the camera, that mindset never leaves. Light is a variable. Terrain is a constraint. Weather is constantly evolving. The decisive moment is a solution, identified, anticipated, and captured before it disappears.

When I retired from the National Guard in 2005, photography wasn’t a hobby I wanted to explore. It was a commitment. I purchased my first DSLR knowing it would become my next vocation, one demanding the same preparation, patience, and fieldcraft that military service had required.

I often joke that I traded my cannon for a Canon.

The truth is, I mean it literally.

As a lifelong outdoorsman raised in Utah, I’ve spent decades exploring the mountains, deserts, forests, and wilderness areas I now photograph. I walked these landscapes long before I ever carried a camera through them. That familiarity has taught me where storms build, how wildlife moves, when the aspens ignite with color, and where the first light of morning quietly transforms an ordinary scene into something unforgettable.

People sometimes ask whether my work is driven more by art or by discipline. The answer is both. Every photograph is where an artist’s eye meets a soldier’s patience, an engineer’s precision, and a lifelong outdoorsman’s understanding of the landscape.

Each piece is produced as a strictly limited edition and accompanied by a hand signed Certificate of Authenticity, embossed seal, serialized holograms, and registration in the Greg Westbrook Fine Art Archive. My work has been exhibited internationally in a digital gallery in Italy and throughout Utah’s regional fine art festival circuit.

Every photograph I release represents years of experience, countless miles in the field, and often days of waiting for a moment that lasts only seconds. My hope is that each piece becomes more than artwork on a wall. It becomes part of a family’s story, passed from one generation to the next.