I | CREATE

“I’m a hands-on learning kind of guy,” he says. “I like to just figure things out myself over having someone else tell me what to do. I go to people to learn from them after I’ve done enough experimenting on my own. Only after having that emotional investment into a subject do I care enough to learn about the basic theory.”

After College, 1988 Dieter pursued his passion for playing music. He found success through both playing gigs and working as an at-home audio engineer who worked with other musicians.

Dieter says, “I was part of a band called ‘Picture This!’ that made quite a bit of noise in the Mid-South. We played ‘50s and ‘60s covers, and gigged at a lot of fun clubs like the EXIT/IN, college campuses, and some bigger spots all over the area.”

In 1990, he formed InhausCreative. Through this business, he focused on graphic design work for almost fifteen years, creating logos and working with international brands. Distilling business and organizational concepts down to their core visual elements was rewarding, and something few could do. “One of my most well-known clients was Tennessee whiskey brand George Dickel. I had a six-year run with them, doing the work for their bottles, their promotional materials, and everything else,” Dieter says.

The graphic design work was more than creating digital art. It was a multi-step process that required purchasing lots of stock photo images from sites like photography vendor Getty Images. “Working on graphic design projects, I was spending a lot of money on other people’s work.” So he realized that moving into photography was a viable next step.

With a reputation for doing great graphic design work, in 2003 Dieter knew that digital photography was the future, so he bought his own camera and gear. Later, he joined iStock Photo as a contributing photographer. He combined his graphic design skills, photography and the use of editing software to create never-before-seen images.

“The editing combined with the photography allowed me to bring creative concepts into the work. From this, I was making cooler stuff that no one else was selling. That’s what elevated my status as a preferred vendor to these sites,” Dieter says.

With this reputation as a preferred vendor, he networked with other professional photographers. These photographers were curious about his work and exchanged his editing insight for their wisdom of making great photos in-camera.

“I zeroed in on specific stuff that I knew for certain that graphic designers would want to buy,” he says.

Making artful stock images—including blades of grass and different glasses of beer in front of a white background—helped him become a bestselling stock photographer. Such pics were purchased for use in major news stories, billboards, and airport signage all over the world. They also kicked off several global trends, with other photographers trying to copy what they were seeing.

“With everything I do, I’m always looking for the thing that hasn’t been done. Or, at least the thing that hasn’t been done well,” Dieter says.

Keeping his eyes on new horizons is what brought him to video production.

In 2009, he took an offer to produce an indie feature horror film “LWA: All Saints Eve,” serving as an executive producer. Dieter then wrote and directed a series of short films. One of his favorite things about doing shorts is building relationships with other talented personnel without the specter of some deadline looming over everything. Dieter says, “It’s amazing some of the people I’ve been able to work with on these projects.

Dieter has repeatedly been at the forefront of major industry breakthroughs while also employing the latest innovations and technologies to best serve whatever role he is taking on at the time. His reputation for being the ‘first-call” of some of the largest names in multiple industries when the right man to get the job done was needed is exactly what led him to become a crucial part of the Wayfarer family.

He joined Wayfarer as a director in 2023 and joined the artist roster the following year. In 2024 he acquired Wayfarer Records with life-long friend Sean O’Bryan Smith. He serves as Vice-President Wayfarer Music Group and Owner of InhausCreative.

Wayfarer Music Group is a collection of some of the top creative and innovative minds in the music and entertainment industry. Our goal is to transcend the known of how the creative industries have existed and transform it into a brand-new way of supporting artists, creatives and exploring minds so that they can share their gifts with lovers of the arts all around the world.