Michael Hutcheon

Photographer. Father. Forfar-born. Tennessee-made.

Portrait placeholder

Who I Am

I moved to the United States at nineteen on a soccer scholarship. I met my wife at university, built a life here, and eventually found my way to East Tennessee permanently. These pages are a record of what happened next.

Photography came later — not as a career plan but as a way of paying attention. The Smoky Mountains will do that to you if you spend enough time in them. I started making images of the places we hiked, the light I kept noticing, the kids at the ages they'll never be again. Eventually other people started asking me to do the same for them.

The Work

By day, I run production operations at Big Slate Media in Knoxville, where I also work as a commercial photographer. The freelance photography you see on this site — the elopements, the personal work, the adventures — is a separate thing. It's the photography I do because I can't not.

Most of my personal work happens in a thirty-mile radius of Knoxville. The Smokies are right there. I know them well — the trails that most people skip, the overlooks before the crowds arrive, the particular quality of light in February when the trees are bare and everything goes flat and honest. I keep coming back because there's always something I haven't seen yet.

The elopement work found me through the personal work. Couples encounter the images from our weekends in the mountains and reach out because they want that same quality of attention for their own day. I take that seriously. An elopement is not a photoshoot. It's a moment that belongs to two people, and my job is to be present for it without getting in the way.

How I Edit

The light as I remember it.

My editing tends toward the cinematic — warm undertones, lifted shadows, muted greens. I'm not chasing a trend. It's just how the mountains look to me when the light is right, and I'm trying to make the rest of the images feel that way too.

Practically: teal-blue shadows, amber midtones, warm gold in the highlights. Blacks lifted just enough to keep the image breathing. Greens pulled toward olive. It's a palette I've landed on over years of making images in the same landscape, and it's become the thread that runs through everything — personal work and client work alike.

Elopements & Couples

Planning something worth photographing?

I'd love to hear about it.

Get in Touch