I grew up on a family farm in western North Dakota. My younger brother and I were the third generation of Kellers raised on that square mile of rolling hills a short drive from Lake Sakakawea. We were not much farther from the Badlands of which Teddy Roosevelt became so fond. Growing up on the land, surrounded by wide open spaces, gave me a love of landscape and scenery that will remain with me forever and is a major part of my photography. Today, I make my home in Lexington, Virginia, where natural beauty and historic architecture abounds. My global travels also supply me with ample subject matter.
A native of Halliday, North Dakota, I attended North Dakota State University in Fargo, where I earned a B.S. in mathematics with a minor in computer science and completed the University Honors Program. I then attended the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, earning a Ph.D. in mathematics and serving extensively in Graduate Student Government. After graduate school, I began the nomadic phase typical of so many academics today and moved to London for a two-year fellowship at the London School of Economics and Political Science. It was while living in the United Kingdom that my passions for travel and photography emerged. I am an avid collector of miles and points to subsidize my international travel habit, and I began taking photographs simply to document my travels. As time has gone on, however, I've begun thinking more artistically about my photography. While living in the UK, I managed to visit all four of the home nations, travel to a number of continental European countries, and made my first trip to Australia. After my time in London came to an end, I returned to my Midwestern roots and spent a year at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as a Research Assistant Professor. My time in Nebraska was short-lived, however, when I accepted a tenure-track position in the Department of Mathematics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia beginning in Fall 2013. It seems that as time marches on, I will reach a day when I will have spent more of my life in the South than my native Midwest, but I will always be a Midwesterner at heart.
Given my origins as a photographer in documenting my travels, it is probably not surprising that much of my photography focuses on landscape work. I love photographing natural beauty, but the architectural beauty of our built environment fascinates me as well. I can't imagine a day when I tire of photographing bridges or night cityscapes. I am working on developing an eye for more close-up sorts of photography, and perhaps the arrival of my nephew Jack and niece Emma will help me develop a some skills at photographing people as well.
I am the treasurer of the Rockbridge Camera Club, a great group of photographers in the Rockbridge County area that deserves significant credit for helping me become a better photographer.