John Wooden's love of photography goes back to his teens, when he used a vintage Topcon 35mm camera to capture life and friends growing up in the Lake Michigan resort town of Petoskey, Michigan. John graduated from Northern Michigan University with a B.F.A. degree in Photography in 1979, followed by an additional two years study at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. He began work as a photo assistant and freelance shooter for commercial photography studios in and around Los Angeles before moving to Minneapolis, MN and opening his own commercial studio. For 13 years he produced advertising photography there for clients including Target, Pillsbury and 3M.
But John and his wife missed the Northern Michigan area and wanted their kids to have the same small-town childhood that they had, so in 1995 they returned to Petoskey, where John continues serving his photography clients from his loft studio on Lake Street, overlooking Petoskey's famed Gaslight District.