John Trobaugh was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1968. He studied photography at The University of Alabama at Birmingham and received his BFA in 1996 with honors. He completed a year of graduate work in New York at The School of Visual Arts in their Photography and Related Media program in 1997. After returning to Birmingham, he taught courses in photography and computer graphics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and worked as a commercial graphic design artist. In 2002 he received his MA and in 2003 his Masters in Fine Art from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.