About

My name is Hadley Kishpaugh.

I am a 22 year old digital photographer based in Salt Lake City.

Here’s my story.

In my early years I was always obsessed with taking pictures and videos of myself. I started a YouTube channel when I was 10 years old dedicated to talking about the worlds troubles and playing legos with my childhood best friend Bodhi.

My late godfather Pete Houdeshel was an astounding photographer here in Salt Lake. He was my first role model in the digital photography world. I remember as a little girl seeing all of his fancy camera equipment in his office thinking, “I want to be like Pete someday.”.

Pete was very humble about his art. He was also a pilot. Pretty sick huh? I wondered, “what can’t this guy do?”.

Pete loved golf and one day he took me down to the golf course after I had mentioned I wanted to take pictures on his fancy shmancy camera. He showed me how to use his Nikon and take a photo of a weed. I will never forget that moment. I realized right then and there I wanted to take photos of everything. I didn’t care what it was or how far. All I knew was that I wanted his exact camera and be just like him when I grow up.

Pete was later diagnosed with Alzheimers disease. It was devastating for him not to remember who I was, who he was, and everyone that loved him. Unfortunately after a battle with this terrible disease, Pete passed away. Leaving behind his wife, my godmother, Kathy Houdeshel, his two sons Cassidy and Dash Houdeshell.

A few years after Petes passing, I decided to reach out to Kathy about inheriting one of his beloved cameras. She shipped me one the same week. That is where my journey began. In 2021 I got my very first camera. A Nikon D5200 DSLR. It came with two lenses. A 18mm-55mm and a 55mm-200mm. I had no idea what I was doing. It was overwhelming and scary to know that my life could change with just this little camera. I had no idea what world I was waltzing into.

I learned as much as I could before I did my first photoshoot. Which was almost a week after receiving my Nikon. I wanted to start taking photos as soon as I could. Learning about ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. Non of it made sense to me so I thought, “i’m going to just fucking wing it.” Which is exactly what I did. I realized I was always searching for the meaning in ordinary experiences.

I decided to post on my instagram about a free photoshoot and had a random person I had never met before ask me to take photos of him and his friends. I agreed and went to a parking garage. I was nervous obviously because it was random men I had never met before. It really pushed me out of my comfort zone to make friends with people I normally wouldn't be friends with. Learning about their lives, how they operate, what their vision is for the photoshoot, and what their views are on life. Turns out one of them was pretty misogynistic and really tried to challenge my creative ability. I will never fault anyone for a good joke but this guy was going in on me. That being my first experience with a man trying to mansplain something to me in the creative world. Ah, Never gets old. The photos turned out great for it being my first shoot ever. I was really proud of myself. I knew I wanted to be different than everyone else in the digital photo world , thus sparking my creative journey.

The real kicker to my creative ways was my first boudoir shoot. It was with a girl I was friends with on instagram who happened to be an exotic dancer. In my opinion that was the perfect client for me to start with because she is so comfortable with expressing herself in a sexy way and it really portrayed itself through the photos. This tickled my brain in a way that’s unimaginable. Photographing men and women through the female gaze. I was amazed by how she was able to feel so comfortable with her naked body. After that shoot I went home thinking “how I could be more like her?” and, “How can I be more feminine and sexy within myself?”. The more boudoir shoots I did the more this question hung over my head. It wasn’t until September of 2024 when I finally found my sexy freeing feminine energy.

As a golden retriever who’s always wanted to have black cat energy, it was always a struggle unlocking that part of myself. With all of the sexy and beautiful women I surround myself with, I had to unlock it somehow. I couldn’t tell someone to be confident and free without being that way myself. The only way I knew how to express myself was through photography and music. I knew I wanted more but I didn’t know where to find it. That is until punk was introduced into my life by my good friend Landon Hale. Landon and I spoke about the hardcore community and the crazy shit that can happen at shows. As someone who had been in the community a while, I trusted him when it came to anything hardcore and punk related. But there was something telling me to pursue this day dream of anarchy and expressing myself through this kind of music.

I went to my first house show in the summer of 2024. Seeing how many open armed people I was then surrounded by was something I had never experienced before. From the banging of the drums, guitar necks being waived around, and the fast paced singing I finally felt like I found a piece of myself that was missing. At my second house show I threw up in Landons mouth who than threw up in someone else’s mouth and so fourth. That’s a story for a different time…Punk kids are nuts.

I used this newfound confidence to learn more about the music and the scene to actually implement this lifestyle into my passion for photography. Which helped substancially in my opinion, because I started not fearing the world anymore and what comes with that is so many more open doors. The hardest part was remembering when to close them.

I wasn't afraid anymore.

But I needed to have fear to know what made me stronger.

So much inspiration has come from so many memories and hardships that have occurred in my life and now I turn it into art. A way for me to let go of the past and recognize the growth I’ve experienced. I know it doesn’t end here. Nothing will stop me from capturing humans in their most perfect form, themselves.

Making art and being who I am is the most important thing to me.

Never let anyone take away your light. Be creative, be punk, and fuck whoever says different.

xoxo, too-beers-in.