November 2024

Time only goes forward!

A chilling two days - Mini Portfolio

I spent the day of the election traveling from California to Denver. My day started at 3:30 AM, I had to catch a 5 AM flight. This flight then was delayed by 5 hours during which I drank a fair amount of Americanos, yet forgot to supplement with any water or food. By the time my dear friend James had picked me up from DEN and we stopped at a place for lunch and some hydration around 2:30 PM my body was giving me a middle finger. The altitude didn’t help. I was solidly dehydrated and felt like crap, slight nausea, headache, the works. We sat on the couch at Jame’s house and I could not even focus my eyes on him sitting 10 feet away. I had to take a nap.

I don’t know what my brain wasn’t computing there. I am usually pretty on top of my system maintenance, especially when I have a program to fulfill. I guess November 5th, 2024 was a day I wasn’t supposed to feel good on.

I crawled into bed around 7:45 pm that evening and tried to watch some of the election coverage but within a few minutes, the TV went out. I guess the Westin Denver has satellite dishes on its roof and the falling snow from the storm killed the signal by covering the dishes. Seemed like something that could have been figured out given the fact that it does snow in Denver from time to time but I didn’t even care and fell asleep by 8 PM and slept all night through until 6 AM when I awoke completely rebooted and felt great.

Until I turned on the TV.

I photographed an editorial story in Boulder that day, November 6th. The images below are not from that shoot. They are documents of the mood in the car driving to the shoot that morning.

Website update

Always exciting, the website update! Less so actually going through it but it needed to happen and I’d love for you to check it out and give some feedback.

Check out the PRINTS section for QUIET, an online exhibition during the month of December as well as the prints archive.

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The Bravest Booger

My neighborhood Ping Pong nemesis is a NYT bestselling author, co-founder of @awkwardfamilyphotos, writer of Not Another Teen Movie, and writer of children’s books. Last year I photographed some PR art for his book “The Most Serious Fart” which went very well, so this year we created some PR art for his current title “The Bravest Booger” (catch a theme here…?)

As far as photo shoots go the production on this one was… n’t… I mean, Mike got a cape and I lit him with strobes but outside of that it was “keeping it real, authentic, and awkward”. No point in producing “authentic”.

Publications

Recent work for Naturally Danny Seo Magazine. This is all in the current (Winter) issue.

-Nature Fresh Farms in Ohio

-Eastern Leaf Bonsai in Chino, California

-Boxed Water in Michigan

On newsstands nationwide until March 2025.

Church

I was on my bike a little less this month. It just didn’t quite work out. Lot’s of little fires everywhere that pulled me away from it. Of course, this is exactly the time when one needs to go out to clear the mind but what can I say, this month it didn’t quite come together. You win some, you lose some.

During one ride up infamous Gibraltar road, I was catching up to two riders and eventually stopped to take a photo right where they had stopped. A few sentences were exchanged before we realized who we were (think helmet, glasses and bike outfits). My friend Tessa and a friend. So then we rode for a mile or so together and Tessa said the classic sentence: This is church for me.

I’ve heard it countless times and probably have spoken those words an equally countless times but this month, on that ride, they rang anew.

We find these things in life that allow us to process, turn off the noise, and go deep. To some that is literally church, to others, it is open ocean swimming, running, painting, car racing, gardening, the list goes on.

Tessa hit a nerve with me when she spoke those words. I am not a religious person, I get my church in the mountains, like her. And I had been neglecting it. It showed in my general level of stress and physical grooviness.

I had just started taking my camera on rides with me. I rigged a simple yet functional tri-sling so the Fuji X-Pro 2 wouldn’t move. I’ll make sure to have someone snap a pic of me wearing it for illustration on a future ride for you all to get an idea. For now, a few shots from the mountains above Santa Barbara.

And finally, a few pages from the journal.

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Until next time,