Trent Foltz holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Forestry and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Photography from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. As a young boy, he loved spending time in rural Northwest Illinois on his grandparents’ farm. For many hours, he used to play in the barn and worked by his grandmother’s side in the garden and also helped his grandfather to sort pigs. After college his life took a different direction. Having a photography degree in hand, he decided to trade the calm life of rural America for a modern life in the city. Being a commercial advertising photographer, he worked with some of the largest blue-chip companies in St. Louis. He has worked for the National Forest Service and the National Park Service before he opened his own advertising photography studio in St. Louis.
A partial list of his clients includes Volvo, Anheuser-Bush, the Missouri Botanical Center and Hard Rock Cafe. After close to 20 years as a commercial advertising photographer, Foltz decided to go back to his hometown to raise his 2 boys. The landscape in Illinois, however, was not like the one he remembered. The days of the small farms were long gone. Fence lines and wooden barns had disappeared, making way for business and housing developments. His grandfather had died by this time and the new owners of the farm were getting ready to bring down the barns. Foltz decided to turn his camera to the attractive scenes of the Midwest landscape before it also disappeared.
