Where Have I Been?
I don’t even know where to begin trying to come up with a good answer for that.
Here. But lazy. Or adrift. And clearly not paying attention.
I haven’t been doing much shooting since the beginning of COVID really. And I don’t know why. It’s a question I keep asking myself. Creating images is the thing that brings me great joy in life and I haven’t been doing it and I don’t have a good reason for that. But that’s where I find myself digging out from.
And I suppose that sort of answers the question as to why I haven’t been here. I’ve created very little new work and haven’t had much to show you or share.
The brain of a photographer is a funny thing. Even though I haven’t been shooting much with any of my cameras, my mind is always looking for the shot, framing subjects, thinking about how to capture scenes in front of me in my own personal way. It never turns off- I’m always always always looking for the photo. The only difference between now and back when I was shooting a lot is literally just the single press of a button. So it’s especially ridiculous that I haven’t been shooting.
After years of thinking about it and testing it multiple times, I recently bought the Ricoh GR IIIx camera. It’s a street shooter, though it’s never been my intention to use it that way. There is something about the images I can create with this camera that brings me back to my love of photography.
I’ve said this before but my goal is never to represent something the way it actually looks. That isn’t something I care about. It’s why I’ll never be a portrait photographer or a landscape photographer. I only want to capture a mood, a feeling and the way I want things to look, even when they don’t actually look that way. This little camera is helping me do just that and it feels magical.
So I think I’m back.
Love & Equality
This is a tough time for all of us to be living through. Watching the world burn as we simultaneously try to exit a pandemic and get our collective shit together in the most important election year of our lifetimes is the challenge leveled by 2020.
It’s hard to know how it’s all going to turn out. My heart grieves for so many things right now. Black lives senselessly lost, the inhumanity that we level on each other, the inhumanity of our President, COVID deaths that don’t seem to end… It’s hard to know how to best help with any of these things.
The only thing I know is that we must find love for each other and bring equality to everyone if we’re going to make it through. There is no other way as a collective of humans that we should treat each other. There is no other way that we all survive this together…
Isolation Nation
Today marks 5 weeks since I’ve been ‘isolating’ at home. My home consists of 350 square feet in a tiny, ancient studio apartment that is mostly filled with good light and friendly plants. It’s not so bad considering that when I live at South Pole, my personal space is only 15-20 % of what I have here. It felt palatial at first but I have to admit that the walls are starting to close in. The light makes me want to rush outside and see what’s going on, take a few photos, wander the city. The plants need siblings, but that will have to wait.
Life has become narrow, ever watching out the windows and wishing to participate in life again. I was an obsessive numbers watcher at the beginning of all this. The first time I looked there were 93,000 people infected around the world. Five weeks later we’re at 2.2 million people, knowing there are probably many more that haven’t been able to be tested. I can’t look at the numbers anymore. I lost interest and had to turn away when they became unfathomable. If felt a little hard to breathe looking at the death tolls and imagining how many people are now longer with us, how many families will grieve forever.
I know that the best I can do is be kind to those that need it, press forward with my work, learn some new skills and will spring into existence through my windows. I’m trying to do all of those things but it’s hard to focus, hard to press forward when so much is unknown about so many things.
For now, we all continue to wait. And I wonder when it’s all said and done, perhaps a year from now, or whenever, if we will even remember these days and how strange they feel.
Be safe my friends. I hope to see you all back in the world again soon…
Creating During Corona
My ‘office’ at home.
So much has changed in the last month. A month ago I was returning from four months in Antarctica and two weeks of travel through New Zealand on my way home. It was the loveliest two weeks after a great season on the ice. On my way I had plans to stop in LA to visit my elderly uncle and it didn’t hit me until I arrived that I should stay as far away from him as possible after all of the traveling I’d been doing. So I didn’t get to see him after all. Then March pretty much went downhill from there in terms of socializing, catching up with people I hadn’t seen in months and living a normal life.
Here we are. All holed up in our own spaces. Some of us working, some of us desperately wishing we were. I’ve been fortunate so far that my day job hasn’t been impacted and I can work from home. I live in a 350 sq. ft studio apartment (that I LOVE!) about 2 blocks from the capitol in downtown Denver. It isn’t exactly a home office that I have to work from…I have friends with home offices bigger than my entire apartment. It’s more like moving 5 feet from the couch to the kitchen table to get to work. But I wouldn’t have it any other way than working in my own space during these weird times.
As an introvert and a serious homebody, when I’m not traveling, this is sort of like a mini-dream come true being able to stay at home without feeling guilty. I love that I have hours more each day to myself now that I’m not commuting or doing any of the other myriad things that seem to eat up my weekdays outside of work hours. I love that I have the time and head space to slow down and really think about my creative projects and where I’m going with them. This has been the biggest benefit. It’s hard to be still when we’re running around ‘living’ life every day.
I’m trying to take advantage of this time to increase the time I spend creating every day. To hone my skills, learn new creative tools for my craft and generally get my creative shit together a bit more. So far, it’s been going great and I think I’m making the best possible use of my time. I’ve got new project ideas and I’m working hard to wrap up a couple of projects that have been in progress for a while. It feels a bit indulgent to have all this time to do these things, but I’m trying not to let that slow me down.
Social Distancing
These are weird times. This is a terribly ravaging illness racing through our populations and it’s hard to watch so many people not being able to make it through. And it’s hard knowing that we still have a long ways to go before we get through this. But in some ways, these are still times to be grateful for. We all get to slow down and appreciate our friends & family a bit more. We all get to spend a bit more time pondering our next moves and how we can create our best lives out of them. We all get to feel connected to something global, not the corona itself, but the solidarity of trying to help each other through it. I’m so delighted by the incredible number of acts of kindness that the world is doing and sharing right now. It’s a rare thing to see and I feel lucky to be able to observe and participate in it.
Yes, these are weird times, and hard times. But there is much to be grateful for. There is much that we can do to improve our lives during the stillness, and the lives of others. Be safe my friends, look out for those around you and remember that we are all in this together. Brighter days are coming.
Paris moon.
Another New Beginning
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
This is the launch post of my new website, finally using my own name. It’s something I’m reeeeally excited about. I waited far too long to do it and had to learn a lot to get here.
The last seven years have been a wild and amazing journey in my life. I wondered back then what the hell I was doing as I turned my life upside down in a painful way. I only knew that I had to, so I did, but I had absolutely no idea what to do next.
I love looking back now and being able to connect the dots. Seeing how other people are happier, I’m happier and all the stops along the way that brought me right here. Seeing and doing so many things that I only dreamed of before.
I couldn’t have known it then, but burying myself in my creative pursuits was probably the best thing I could have done. Learning to see differently while creating my photos also helped me see things differently in my life. Coming back to writing after so many years away was like a life-affirming hug from an old friend who understands you like no one else. We’ll never part ways again. These are the things that have sustained me, along with incredible friends that stuck by me and understood. (You know who you are!)
Now I find myself here with photography front & center in my life. Teaching others and creating my best work yet. Feet firmly on the ground knowing where I’m going now and what to do next. With this new website, finally owning my work under my own name.
I love knowing that the dots all lead us to exactly where we should be at exactly the right time… The universe always has a way of bringing things around full circle, sometimes when you least expect it.