My Why

About Me – Marty O. Photography

I photograph what others forget to feel.

After more than twenty years of military service, including three combat deployments, I came back carrying more than physical injuries. I returned with memories I could not name and emotions I could not process. I did not find photography. It found me. It gave structure to chaos and helped me speak when nothing else made sense.

I do not just take photos. I bear witness. To silence. To weight. To the kinds of moments most people miss because they look away. My lens does not flinch. I do not follow trends. I stay with the truth.

Through My Looking Glass, I document the fractures, the stillness, the aftermath. The images I create aren’t about perfection. They’re about presence.

I graduated from F.I.R.S.T. Institute because I needed to learn how to control what I saw. I already had the instinct. What the program gave me was the space to slow down and figure out how to shape it. I learned how to work with lighting, both natural and studio, and how to finish an image in Photoshop and Lightroom without losing the feeling behind it. I shot almost every day. Practiced framing. Practiced editing. Practiced pulling a story out of a scene instead of forcing one into it. The training did not give me a style. It gave me the tools to build mine on my own terms.

I am also an alumnus of The Odyssey Project, a visual storytelling program led by photojournalist Brendan Bannon. That experience pushed me past the surface of my own story and into the reason I photograph at all. Not just to capture what is seen. To reveal what is buried.

I am a member of the Professional Photographers of America, and I carry that standard into every frame I make.

Through Marty O. Photography, I document the world as I see it. Raw. Real. Unfiltered. I create images shaped by everything I have lived through. Combat. Transition. Memory. Survival. I do not create for attention. I create because the story demands to be told. Sometimes photography is the only language that gets it right.

You do not need to know war to understand my work. You just need to feel it.