Forrest Zerbe spent his undergraduate years trying to find himself and figure out his passion. Furniture was Zerbe's first real love and he finished his undergraduate with an emphasis in wood working. Zerbe decided that he would go to graduate school for furniture design and was accepted to Savannah College of Art and Designs. He never really stopped doing photography during those years but he had not yet found that it was going to be his primary medium. It took Zerbe revisiting formal courses in graduate school to discover that he did indeed love and miss the darkroom. The first photography course he took at SCAD had him hooked and he decided to focus more time and energy on the art form and being in the darkroom.
After earning his MFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design, Zerbe spent six years traveling the country and working as a professional in the photographic industry. His bread and butter was portraiture but he also did commercial product shooting and website construction. This was in the early 2000’s when websites were still fairly basic and easily built with basic knowledge of HTML. During this time much was happening with digital technology that really changed and influenced photography. In 2012, Zerbe moved from Aspen to Grand Junction, Colorado. In 2013, he started teaching for Colorado Mesa University in the Department of Art and Design.
With his spare time outside of class, Zerbe enjoys traveling and creating in his darkroom and studio.