About

My name is Drayke Standing Bear I describe myself using the following terms:

gearroomplusme

  • Father – I have a beautiful seven-year-old daughter who constantly amazes me with the wonderful things she does, thinks and imagines. She is the primary motivation behind everything that I do and you’ll see plenty of images of her all over everything that I create!
  • Husband – I am married to one of the most wonderful, caring and beautiful women in the world. She pushes me to constantly try new things and is often the genius behind my most creative work.
  • Businessperson – In addition to my two photography businesses, ::photoSynthetique., I am also an aspiring film maker. My future film production company will be called Synthetique Industries and you can find information on the work I’ve created in that field on the We Are Synthetique page.
  • Tech Priest – This term originated in the game/rpg/novel series ‘Warhammer 40,000’, a vision of a grim, dark future where technology is viewed akin to magic. The techpriests are those whose responsibility it is to maintain the machines and electronics of that world. Most of my life has spent with a great aptitude in similar skills, leading to many jobs in tech support positions (as well as doing tech support even in non-related fields) and plenty of helping friends and family with their gadgets and computers, thus earning the title.
  • Teacher – Beginning in 2012, I am now instructing students as part of the Minneapolis Community Education program. Currently I teach Digital SLR I and Fashion photography classes. If you would be interested in joining one of my classes, please contact me and I can send you the current enrollment links.
  • Photographer

As you might gather from much of the above, Photography is something that is interwoven into everything that I do! There are pictures of me with my very first 110-format film camera, back when I was around five or six, that give you some idea how early I started. All through the years I always had a camera glued to my hand, getting my first job at 15 so that I could afford to purchase film and developing, creating mounds and mounds of prints of all of my friends and family. Then I spent my early twenties trying to figure out what to do with my life. Bouncing around jobs in a variety of industries, I couldn’t really find one that truly captured my interest, but taking pictures of everything along the way.

It’s been a hard road, as it so often is for artists regardless of their chosen discipline, but I have never questioned it. I love creating images, I love working with the people that it brings me into contact with and it makes me happy. These are some of the most important things in life, to me.

Fashion and portraiture are my favourite photographic styles and I think it shows in everything that I do, whether it’s weddings, children, families or animals that I’m creating images of. I love helping people look their best! My personal business motto is “Find Beauty Everywhere“, and I mean it. I think everyone and everything is beautiful, even if sometimes you just need to find the right angle to shoot from. This also means that I am a strongly equal-opportunity photographer in every sense. I work with a variety of clients and models of varying height, weight, age, skin colour, sexual preference as well as taste in clothing and every single one is worthy of the same level of respect.

My work has been featured in such publications as Gothic Beauty, Wired, the Gothic and Lolita Bible International, RX, City Pages, Vita.MN, and Dark Beauty, as well as having the cover image and several inserts for an upcoming book focused on fetish fashion by Dr. Frenchy Lunning.

But that’s enough about me, what about you? I would love to learn more about you and the best way for us to do that is to find some time to create art together. So send me an email or give me a call and let’s see how we can share your beauty with the world!

::Drayke

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