My Name is Robert Anthony

In 2023, My Wife, Joelle and I sold our Flower Shop and Home in Central Florida along with almost everything else we once owned and hit the road to live FULL TIME in our RV.

This is my story.

I began using a camera when I was 18 years old. It was a Canon EOS film with auto focus. I loved shooting on film. I practiced regularly.

When my children came along, there was a significant pause of many years in my photographic journey. The cost of developing film became too prohibitive and I had to put the camera down for a time.

Enter the digital age. In the year 2008, I purchased my first fully digital camera and lens. It was a Nikon D70 with a kit lens. Since that time, I have been shooting digital, and I’ve never looked back.

I have photographed just about every imaginable subject matter. It began with my kids as subjects. This morphed into family and high school senior portraits. I even mixed in a few weddings for good measure. Gotta’ cover all the bases.

I did a stint photographing beautiful women scantily clad, and finally finished up my photography of people by spending time in my region’s largest children’s hospital doing voluntary photography sessions with terminally ill children and young adults and their families, providing them with a photo book of the session as a gift. This last effort of photographing human subjects gave me the most joy—and the most emotionally challenging times—in my photographic adventures to date.

Highs and Lows

My life has seen its share of very high points and very low points. Born and raised in Michigan, growing up in the flower business, I spent time in Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Flint before officially moving to Florida. In 2007, I moved our family 1600 miles from what we knew as home into a land with which we were unfamiliar, knew no one, and had no idea what the outcome would be. Shortly before moving to Florida, my youngest son was hospitalized with what the doctors believed was colon cancer. Much to our family’s relief, this ended up not being the case. It took months to finally get the official diagnosis. It was a tough time.

Once in Florida, I experienced another set of troubling times unearthing infidelity in my marriage, bankruptcy, and the pain of dealing with divorce… and all the “fun” that brings.

Once that was in full swing, the housing crash of 2008-09—which hit Florida harder than most states—was upon us. My flower business’ volume was cut by upwards of 50%, leading to the kids and I not really know from where the next meal would come for a good chunk of time.

It was in this period of my life that not only did I take up learning to play the drums (a lifelong dream inspired by Neil Peart of Rush fame as well as The Blue Man Group), but I began to get more active with my camera again.

September 25, 2016 Changed My Life Forever

The Photograph you see here was taken at the top of The Chimney Tops in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. This, the first trip of it’s kind for me and the two boys in the photo (my sons), is the trip which started me/us on the journey in photography and life as I now know it.

The trip was planned by Levi (the kid in the red and black) and I to celebrate a life accomplishment he and I had attained together, father and son, over a 3-year period of time. We felt it appropriate at the time to include Ed, my stepson, in the adventure, too.

It was on this trip that we hiked out first legitimate hike (Andrews Bald), Levi was officialy donned with his most famous nickname, The “Dogman”, and we were exposed to the first view of such a sort in our lives: the top of Chimney Tops. That hike and that view specifically sealed our fate as hikers and wilderness-loving men. It was a fate that would, in subsequent years, take us to places we never could even have dreamt exist.

Fear No More

The Chimney Tops hike will go down in The Book of Rob’s Life as the hike which would break all barriers. It is the single most important hike ever accomplished for all three of us men. While not the hardest hike by any stretch by my personal standards today, it was, at the time, the first of it’s kind I had done… and it terrified me. Up until that point, I was petrified of heights. This hike, happening before the mountain burned and left the top forever scarred, brought me up against facing not only my fear of heights, but doing so in an extreme, highly-exposed, dangerous way.

Once we were over the ridge, seeing the view with the clouds billowing below us, tears sprung to my eyes as I considered the greatness and power and creativity of the Lord’s hand. I was overcome by how wonderful it was to be sharing the view of such majesty with my sons.

It brought to mind a metaphor that I could then apply to life in the form of a story and a lesson. A first of tens of even perhaps hundreds that would develop in the years following through all of the adventures I have trekked and photographs I have taken.

To Travel 10,000 Miles

Since that fateful and life-altering trip, I have travelled tens of thousands of miles… literally! Some I have gone alone, but many, if not most, have been traveled with the company of at least one other person. The next trip which followed the famed Levi, Ed, and Rob Smokies Trip was taken with my wife Joelle to the same locale. I have driven or flown all across this land with my sons, my daughter, my wife, and on occasion a good friend or two. Every trip I’ve taken has been for the purpose of doing photography. So much more is always the end result. There is never a trip I take that more stories are not gathered. Every image or photograph you see on this site has a story affixed to it. Some kind of metaphorical story has been given to me through the experience of capturing each image. In almost every one, in some way shape or form, these stories will point back to the majesty of God, or in some way my gratitude for what God did for me in sending Jesus Christ to our world to die for us that we might gain eternal life. How the Creator of all we see is personally involved in my small life is inextricably connected with all the photos I take.

There are also a number of metaphorical stories here which apply to family, raising kids, relationships with others, people in general, courage, guts, taking risks and dealing with hardship and disappointment.

I have decided to build this site around the theme of these matters using the gifts the Lord has endowed me with, those gifts being encouraging and exhorting others to live higher through the use of a camera and the ability to tell entertaining and captivating stories.

Join me, if you dare.

I kid. Won’t you consider joining me on these adventures through photography and video? Check out the subscribe link below to connect to my blog and be updated whenever new photos and videos have been posted or to read a new story that I am sharing. You can always check out my galleries or my store to purchase photos for sale.

Please reach out to me through my contact form if you want to share your thoughts, get in touch, or talk with me about a speaking opportunity you may have for which you might like my services.

I look forward to encouraging and sharing my life adventures with you.