Award-winning photographer Phil Savage produces conversation-starting artwork.
“About our Work”
Phil Savage has a true passion for life that is clearly demonstrated in his love for photography. Phil doesn’t adhere to one particular photographic style, he simply loves to explore the countless possibilities that the photographic medium has to off er. Phil particularly embraces ‘Black & White Infrared’ images with hand-tinted touches. Some of the pictures in our website were taken with an infrared camera, and then hand tinted over portions of the photograph creating a surreal, other worldly quality from a very ordinary, and otherwise mundane moment.
“About Phil Savage”
Phil was born in Mexico City, lived in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guatemala before coming to Washington D.C.. He has travelled all over the world and has visited Europe on numerous occasions. He earned a full gymnastics scholarship from Southern Illinois University where he received a BA in Fine Art Photography and French from there and from the University of Grenoble in southern France.
Dave Black, a fellow collegiate teammate and himself a world renowned photographer, encouraged Phil to pursue the study of photography at SIU. He has been actively involved in photography for over 40 years now.
Phil was inspired by his mother Anne, a graduate of the Art Institute of Geneva, and his father, Paul, a businessman and himself an avid photographer. He settled in East Tennessee when he was hired by fellow Hall-of-Famer and All-American, Ginger Temple Baxter, to help her coach gymnastics. In 2010, Phil became the only Junior National Team coach in the history of Tennessee.
Phil is a 3-time Hall-of-Famer: inducted in 2006 for the TN Gymnastics Hall of Fame, in 2009 for the Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame and in 2011 for the Region 8 Sports Hall of Fame. In May 2014, Phil received the Frank Cumiskey Award. It is the highest honor awarded to a coach in the USA Gymnastics Federation. Phil met his wife Lisa and together they have been enriching the Knoxville community since 1980 by teaching and coaching kids of all ages in the sport of gymnastics. He is currently the head coach at Harpeth Gymnastics in Franklin, TN where he just won his 32nd consecutive State title.
Phil has a true passion for life that is clearly reflected in the scope of his work in photography. Phil loves to explore the countless possibilities that the photographic medium has to offer. He particularly embraces black and white infrared images with hand tinted touches, creating a surreal, other-worldly quality. He enjoys photographing challenging topics such as sports, architecture and nature. He loves to experiment with time exposures, night time photography, abstracts and light painting. Phil is the first photographer to win the Dogwood Arts Festival contest which is usually awarded to painters. He has a unique ability to combine technology and painting effects, stretching the concrete limits of the “camera eye” into heroic images imbued with fresh meaning. Under Phil’s unique touch, a building that one passes daily, without notice, now becomes a poetic and very timely object, highlighting our city’s revival. Phil’s unrelenting passion to push the envelope of photography to new and unexplored levels has resulted in some very unique and wonderful images. His motto is to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary and to challenge himself and others to constantly look around and study the endless possibilities photography has to offer.