The blog is where the journey behind the lens unfolds—moments that don’t always fit neatly into a gallery, but deserve a place to breathe. Here, I share the stories, experiments, discoveries, and quiet realizations that shape my work. It’s less about perfection and more about the process of paying attention to the world and what it’s trying to say.
What happens to the way we see once we start noticing what we used to overlook?
What happens to the way we see once we start noticing what we used to overlook?
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I almost stayed in bed this morning.
That small, persuasive voice had a solid pitch: the blanket was warm, the rain was steady, the drive was long, and the odds of coming home with anything worth photographing felt slim. Comfort made its case. Doubt seconded the motion.
I’m glad I didn’t listen.
Instead, I drove north to one of my favorite places, Fort Worden State Park, perched above the water in Port Townsend. A place where history lingers in concrete bunkers and weather does whatever it wants. I wandered for a couple of hours, boots damp, shoulders relaxed, letting the park set the pace.
The rewards came quietly, and it then all at seems to come at once. A dozen or so deer moving through the trees as if I wasn’t there. More varieties of mushrooms than I could count, each one a small, improbable sculpture pushing up through wet earth. The sky and sea in conversation, trading drama and light, clouds breaking just enough to suggest that patience pays off. The rain softened, the day opened, and the photographs followed.
None of it would have happened if I’d stayed under that blanket.
There’s a lesson in that, I think. Not a loud one. Just a steady reminder that the days that ask the most of us at the start often give the most back if we show up anyway. Adventure doesn’t always announce itself with sunshine. Sometimes it whispers through rain and doubt, waiting to see if we’ll still come.
So here’s the question I’m carrying home with me today:
How many meaningful moments are quietly waiting on the other side of the days we almost choose not to begin?
How many meaningful moments are quietly waiting on the other side of the days we almost choose not to begin?
Winter Solstice at Discovery Park
On a Sunday afternoon, December 21st, 2025, the Winter Solstice, I went for a walk at Discovery Park with a film camera and no real agenda beyond seeing what the light might offer. Discovery Park is my favorite park in Seattle. I have been coming here for nearly thirty years. Different seasons of life, different cameras, different versions of myself, but the same trails, the same bluff, the same pull toward the water.
The camera that day was my Minolta SRT 202. Heavy, mechanical, and built like a tank (I actually dropped it in the gravel with the lens cap off as soon as I started shooting! Fortunately just some scratches on the metal and a little bend but no damage to the lens or anything else). It is the kind of camera that demands intention. Somewhere along the walk the exposure meter stopped working, which meant I was back to estimating light with the help of an iPhone app called Lightme. It helps, but it is never exact. Translating digital suggestions into physical dials takes practice, trust, and a willingness to be wrong. I have found that uncertainty to be part of the fun. Guess. Commit. Move on.
Discovery Park on the Winter Solstice delivered everything I hoped for. Moody light drifted in and out beneath thick clouds. Sunlight broke through just long enough to scatter bright reflections across the water. Ferries and cargo ships slid along the horizon, enormous yet distant enough to look like ants moving through a miniature world. In some places, rain poured down in defined sections, darkening the water in sharp contrast to the lighter areas nearby. The landscape felt alive, constantly shifting, never settling.
Shooting film in those conditions is both rewarding and humbling. Light changes quickly. Contrast pushes limits. There is no instant feedback, no reassurance, no quick correction. You simply keep walking, framing, releasing the shutter, and trusting that something will make it through.
Then comes the waiting. Sending off a roll of film is its own quiet ritual. Days pass. Expectations rise and soften. When the scans came back, the results were not as strong as I had hoped. Many frames missed the mark. Some moments lived better in memory than on film. But that is part of the process. Film does not promise perfection. It asks for patience, but also the imperfection is also part of the deal, which I appreciate.
Despite that, or maybe because of it, I am already looking forward to getting out and shooting more film in the new year. Slower walks. Fewer frames. More trust in the process. More room for surprise.
And yes, one of the images from this walk was taken with my iPhone instead of the Minolta.
Can you guess which one it is?
Can you guess which one it is?
Happy New Year!
That Afternoon on the Green River, December 13, 2025
This afternoon, Riley, Walter and I; camera in one hand, curiosity in the other wandered toward the Green River, driven by a simple need: fresh air, stretching legs, the whistle of wind through winter-graying trees. What I expected was a gentle stroll, paws squishing sludge on the path, the usual hum of suburban waterway life.
What we found was something else entirely.
Where the trail hugs the riverbank, water wasn’t confined to its bed anymore. It had marched over pathways, claimed stones and roots alike, lapping at edges that, until this week, I’d never seen breached. The river, swollen and arrogant, pulsed with a quiet fury; more wide than deep, more unstoppable than polite. It felt vast, hungry somehow, like a story just beginning its sentence.
In every direction beyond our feet, Western Washington is living through one of those rare, raw moments that etch themselves into collective memory. An unusually powerful atmospheric river dropped well over a foot of rain across the region over the past week, sending rivers — the Skagit, Snohomish, Cedar, White, and yes, even the Green; into historic flood stages. Tens of thousands have been evacuated from low-lying communities, and dramatic rescues: from boats, helicopters, even rooftops; have played out against a backdrop of brown, rushing water and weary emergency crews. (ABC News)
In Kent and Auburn, neighbors stacked sandbags in a mad scramble to protect homes as the Green River overtopped its banks near the West Valley Highway, water creeping up where it hadn’t in decades. (KOMO) Up north, rivers set records — the Skagit cresting above its historical high in Mount Vernon, communities once again reminded that water remembers its own power better than we remember its limits. (KUOW)
There’s a strange poetry to walking dogs alongside all this — the contrast between the boys' excited sniffing at every puddle (their own personal tributaries) and the solemn, almost reverent roar of the river. It’s both humbling and invigorating to watch nature rewrite familiar corridors, to see how quickly everything changes when the slow drip of rain becomes a torrential chorus.
I wonder how many are asking this question: When the rivers rise, what are we ready to let go of; and what are we willing to rebuild?
September/October 2025 trip to Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan.
Japan doesn’t simply welcome you; it rearranges your sense of wonder. The country hums with a peculiar harmony—where vending machines glow like lanterns in the night, bullet trains glide as if friction were an inconvenience, and ancient temples exhale centuries of quiet patience. I wandered through alleyways stitched together by aromas of broth and soy, tasted ramen that felt like a warm handshake, and stood still in gardens where time wouldn’t dare intrude. Each moment invited a slower breath, a sharper eye, and a quieter ego. What I captured with my camera was only the surface; what I carried home was something far less visible—a subtle shift in how I see the world, and perhaps, how I see myself.
