Nick Smarto's photostream

Nick is a 22 year-old Pittsburgher, photographer and musician – chronically suffering from both delusions of grandeur and suffocating pragmatism.

Nick has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. His current day job is a Business Development Application Engineer at the Elliott Company in Jeannette, PA (resume here). On the nights and weekends, he is a photographer and runs a videography business.

Nick currently lives at his house in Level Green, PA with his Golden Retriever named Lumen.

He enjoys eclectic interests including: Photography, rowing crew, motorcycles, music festivals, improv piano, camping, hiking, lighting design, creative writing, sketching, dive coffee shops, unplanned road trips, cooking, 3:00am Sheetz runs, the color orange, climbing, jogging, filmmaking, a good pair of headphones, heist films, plain colored T-shirts, creative late-night road-sign procurement, fishing, thunderstorms, barbecues, personal improvised firework displays, traveling, tailgating, wine, jazz, the blues, fine cigars, Golden Retrievers, Sturgis, and the Great Blue Heron Music Festival.

His favorite music artists include: Led Zeppelin, Joss Stone, Jamie Cullum, Jimi Hendrix, Jason Yudoff, North Mississippi Allstars, The Avett Brothers, Entrain, The Clarks, The Town Pants, Foo Fighters, Coheed and Cambria, The Black Crowes, Donna the Buffalo, The Darkness, Kate Voegele, Jamiroquai, Flyleaf, Dropkick Murphys, Gaelic Storm, The Gabe Dixon Band, Robert Randolph & the Family Band. (If there it’s Celtic, piano-driven or bluesy, he probably owns it).

Nick believes in the healing power of music, the pursuit of the perfect photograph, independent politics, love, existentialism, counterculture, the freedom of two-wheels, meritocracy, technocracy, debate for the sake of debate, net-neutrality, recycling, shameless self-promotion, the superiority of being outdoors, goal-setting and referring to himself in the third-person. Nick is a walking, breathing contradiction.