John was born and raised in the suburbs of Sacramento, CA. He was introduced to photography during his junior year of high school in 1988.

He pursued all areas of photography very passionately as a hobby until becoming a professional portrait photographer in 1993, after several friends convinced him to photograph their weddings.

It has always been John’s goal to create something original and different but fantasy portraits were never part of the plan. “I wasn’t looking for it, it found me”, recalls John. “Around 2003 Photoshop introduced a new tool called liquify and just to show what it could do I stretched a brides ears and turned her into an elf. (“Lord of the Rings” was in theatres about this time.) It turned out so nice I put a copy in my portfolio and it just evolved from there. But things really took off when the owner of a faerie collectable store asked me to create 12 images for a calendar. That’s what gave me the biggest push”.

In 2010, while suffering from a sleepless night in a hotel room bed, John received his inspiration for using black light and he was off on what has become the biggest adventure of his career.

 

 

John Poppleton: website
Via: mymodernmet.com