The paradox behind the header image.
Howdy. I'm not a big "look at me, I'm doing yoga!" sort of person. You're unlikely to find many photos of me bending into shapes or taking a selfie while meditating on the side of a cliff.
On my 36th birthday I woke up in Venice, California in the house of my teachers Tommy Rosen & Kia Miller. I had started contracting for Tommy a year prior, and as we flipped the page to 2017, I started working full time. Several other scrappy and recovered folks were also on board, and we had spent several days figuring out how to take the teachings of yoga and recovery into new spaces.
My birthday was a Sunday, and there was no work scheduled for the day. My life was tender and confusing in those moments, and I expected I would wander the mile towards the beach and seek out some form of Message from God in kelp and seashells.
A new friend, DJ Pierce was also there, a masterful photographer who had just shy of one million friends in the greater Los Angeles area. As this was our day off, I expected he would leapfrog from gathering to gathering doing the happy shiny thing.
But instead, over breakfast and coffee, he asked,
"What should we do today?"
I blurted my plan, to read the runes and hieroglyphics on the beach.
He said he was coming with me.
We wandered up and down, and he photographed gulls and rollerbladers and the things only skilled photographers can capture, somewhere between the miniblinds of everything else.
"GET ON THE ROCKS!" he said, "The light is incredible!"
I resisted. Openly. Loudly.
Verbally.
What I learned in the years that followed, is that photographers cannot resist the miracle that is perfect light. Most of us think that photographers are seeking a subject or an object, but in fact, they seek out light. Everything else is just backstory.
I went up onto the rocks, but stood firm in my "not doing a yoga pose," and he snapped away. Then, the sun set, it got cold, and we went off in search of aloo gobi.
Months later, a student asked if she could write an article about me for a magazine. They (of course) wanted an image, because that's the incentive that gets you to read the words. I had no images to share. I had selfies in which I was making uncomfortable faces and was informed in no uncertain terms that they would not do.
I asked DJ if any of the images he got that day... nine or so months earlier... was fit for public consumption. I hadn't seen any of them, they just lived on one of the thousands of cards photographers keep for someday, when they will finally get around to sorting through the uncompensated work they have done and mine the gems.
He sent me this.
A moment in time, when I was not well dressed, certainly not a model, and seething with resentment at being forced into the frame.
Would be a shame to put all that light in a shoebox, right?
So here I am, The object that the light shines around. The perfect moment snapped through the miniblinds of despair and resentment. Reborn, whole.
Seen.
Howdy. I'm not a big "look at me, I'm doing yoga!" sort of person. You're unlikely to find many photos of me bending into shapes or taking a selfie while meditating on the side of a cliff.
On my 36th birthday I woke up in Venice, California in the house of my teachers Tommy Rosen & Kia Miller. I had started contracting for Tommy a year prior, and as we flipped the page to 2017, I started working full time. Several other scrappy and recovered folks were also on board, and we had spent several days figuring out how to take the teachings of yoga and recovery into new spaces.
My birthday was a Sunday, and there was no work scheduled for the day. My life was tender and confusing in those moments, and I expected I would wander the mile towards the beach and seek out some form of Message from God in kelp and seashells.
A new friend, DJ Pierce was also there, a masterful photographer who had just shy of one million friends in the greater Los Angeles area. As this was our day off, I expected he would leapfrog from gathering to gathering doing the happy shiny thing.
But instead, over breakfast and coffee, he asked,
"What should we do today?"
I blurted my plan, to read the runes and hieroglyphics on the beach.
He said he was coming with me.
We wandered up and down, and he photographed gulls and rollerbladers and the things only skilled photographers can capture, somewhere between the miniblinds of everything else.
"GET ON THE ROCKS!" he said, "The light is incredible!"
I resisted. Openly. Loudly.
Verbally.
What I learned in the years that followed, is that photographers cannot resist the miracle that is perfect light. Most of us think that photographers are seeking a subject or an object, but in fact, they seek out light. Everything else is just backstory.
I went up onto the rocks, but stood firm in my "not doing a yoga pose," and he snapped away. Then, the sun set, it got cold, and we went off in search of aloo gobi.
Months later, a student asked if she could write an article about me for a magazine. They (of course) wanted an image, because that's the incentive that gets you to read the words. I had no images to share. I had selfies in which I was making uncomfortable faces and was informed in no uncertain terms that they would not do.
I asked DJ if any of the images he got that day... nine or so months earlier... was fit for public consumption. I hadn't seen any of them, they just lived on one of the thousands of cards photographers keep for someday, when they will finally get around to sorting through the uncompensated work they have done and mine the gems.
He sent me this.
A moment in time, when I was not well dressed, certainly not a model, and seething with resentment at being forced into the frame.
Would be a shame to put all that light in a shoebox, right?
So here I am, The object that the light shines around. The perfect moment snapped through the miniblinds of despair and resentment. Reborn, whole.
Seen.
