After more than a decade in emergency nursing, T.G. Paschal found his way back to photography and turned a lifelong creative pursuit into a thriving career.

Words by Cooper Kirkpatrick | Images by Justin Hunter

Thomas Grady “T.G.” Paschal, a former emergency room nurse of 12 years, is now a full-time sports photographer who has turned a lifelong passion into a career.

T.G. has been taking photos since he was 13 years old. His father, Tom Paschal, pursued photography as a hobby and often had T.G. develop the photos and deliver them to others. During a junior high football game that the two attended together, T.G. asked if he could use his father’s camera. His father indulged his curiosity, teaching him how to operate it, and T.G. took to it as though it were second nature.

From that point forward, his fascination with photography only grew. T.G. cites his father as the greatest inspiration and driving force behind his love for the craft.

“He invested everything he could into me for me to follow it because he knew I was good at it. He and my mother bought all the equipment, took me all the places I could go, and there’s no way I would have done it without them,” T.G. says.

T.G. later attended the University of Alabama, where he also worked part-time for The Tuscaloosa News. While there, he met sports reporter Travis Reier, who offered him a job photographing for a sports website. The then-18-year-old T.G. accepted without hesitation and continued working with Reier for years.

In 2008, Paschal graduated with a degree in visual journalism. Around the same time, however, a stock market crash led to numerous layoffs and hiring freezes across the country, many of those in journalism, leaving him with no practical way to use his degree in a market that had suddenly become deeply unstable.

“I remember thinking that I’ve got to go do something else on top of this. So, I figured I could be a nurse three days a week and shoot pictures three days a week,” he recalls.

With that plan in mind, T.G. enrolled at Bevill State Community College to earn his nursing degree while maintaining some freelance photography work each week.

As his nursing career unfolded, however, it became clear that he did not have as much time for photography as he had anticipated. During his 12 years as an ER nurse, T.G. took only the occasional photography job. Nursing proved to be a much greater commitment than he had initially expected, but it was also an eye-opening experience. He quickly realized that nurses perform much of the work in a hospital yet often go unappreciated due to certain misconceptions about the profession.

Despite those challenges, T.G. treated each patient with the same care and meticulous attention he would want for himself during his own emergency room visit. He understood the compassion required to support someone during what might be one of the worst days of their life. Then, in 2022, T.G.’s sister-in-law introduced him to an independent sports journalism outlet whose work centered on sports portraits. He says he viewed their work and thought, “I could do that.”

That spark led T.G. back to his love for photography and encouraged him to embrace the profession fully. Today, his work is defined by a bold, cinematic style that transforms traditional athlete portraits into dramatic visual statements. Using strong lighting, deep shadows, vivid team colors, smoke, powder, and layered motion effects, T.G. creates images that reflect the intensity and energy of the athletes he photographs. The result often feels more like a sports poster than a conventional team photo, and his distinctive approach has helped establish him as a go-to photographer for sports portraits throughout Walker County and the surrounding area.

T.G. remains largely self-taught and is grateful for the ways advances in photography technology have allowed him to continue developing his craft. As his career grows, however, he remains grounded in the people and community that made it possible.

“I don’t ever want to get too big to where I can’t take care of the people from where I came from,” T.G. stresses. “None of what I am today would have happened if I didn’t have all these amazing people supporting me every step of the way.”

That sense of gratitude traces back to his father, whose generosity toward others shaped both T.G.’s approach to photography and his devotion to Walker County.

“If my dad hadn’t done everything he could have for everyone he ever came in contact with, I wouldn’t have learned how to take pictures.”

Now, each time T.G. steps behind the camera, he carries forward not only the passion his father encouraged but also the example he set. 78