In March 2015, founder Adam Hutchinson was working as a corrections officer at a maximum-security prison in Northwestern Pennsylvania.

“It started with a moment of clarity—or maybe a midlife crisis, a come to Jesus moment, a spiritual awakening… I still don’t really know what it was,” Hutchinson recalled.
“I just knew I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I had a steady income, state benefits, and a pension waiting down the line. But none of it seemed to matter anymore.”

In that moment, Hutchinson made a quiet but powerful decision:
“I realized I was willing to walk away from everything—my job, my security—to pursue something I actually loved. The only problem was, I had no idea what that was.”

Looking back, he sees that moment as the true beginning of change.
“I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the turning point. For the first time in my life, I felt a real willingness to do something different. I craved change. But fear—of the unknown, of failure—was always right there with me. Ironically, I was the one imprisoned.”

He adds, “Change only happens when the fear of things staying the same becomes greater than the fear of change. That’s when we become willing.”

Hutchinson officially resigned from the prison on September 9, 2015. He quit drinking on September 24. And on November 20, he picked up a camera for the first time.

“I was literally less than a month into photography, just before Christmas, when I got a message about one of the photos I had taken. ‘Is that for sale?’ she asked…”