I’ve come to understand something important about the way I photograph.
It doesn’t really begin with what I see. It begins with what I feel.
This realization didn’t happen all at once. It came gradually, like fog lifting, slow but sure.
It may seem like I am simply chasing light and seeking to capture beauty. Like how when the early morning light sifts through trees, or how the glow of dawn softens the sharp edges of life, or how on sunny mornings as I’m coming from the bedroom I still can’t believe how the blinding the light in the hallway is or the sharpness of the shadows. Nearly nine years of seeing this not daily, but often, and I am still stunned. I can’t explain why I have not ceased to be amazed by any of these scenes or why I routinely take photographs of the same views over and over attempting to replicate the boldness of the light and shadow—and usually failing. Those things still draw me in, but more often it’s not the scene itself that moves me, it’s what the scene stirs in me.
When I go out with my camera, I don’t always know what I’m looking for. I walk, I pause, I notice. Sometimes it’s the wind blowing through tall grass that catches my attention. Other times it’s the quiet that settles in with twilight’s arrival, or the way shadows stretch as the sun gets lower in the sky. I’ll raise the camera, click the shutter, but I’ve learned that the photograph I take in that moment is just part of the story and only the beginning of the finished photograph.
It’s in the editing of the photo that the real photo-making and creativity happens.
Editing is where I develop what the scene says to me. Where I shape not just what I saw, but what I felt standing there. I might soften the focus, reduce the highlights or shadows—or increase them, change the saturation or tonal quality—or all of the above.
All in an attempt to capture the experience and mood of the scene.
All done to help translate emotion into image. The photograph becomes a reflection and accounting, not just of the subject, but of my inner landscape.
This is especially true when I photograph the night sky. Standing under the moon, surrounded by stars, I feel something too vast for words—something timeless, something magical. The camera can’t always capture that. The moon often flattens into a bright circle and the stars lose their shimmer. But later when editing, I begin to build the image that mirrors my experience more fully.
Sometimes that means long exposures—or bringing together multiple exposures or focus stacking—to echo what my eyes saw across the sky, how my attention moved from the moon to the silhouette of trees, or to the soft texture of clouds drifting by.
Other times, it’s about creating depth and mystery through shadow, pulling out subtle shadows that weren’t visible at first glance. The goal isn’t to recreate the sky exactly as it was. It’s to hold the feeling of witnessing: the stillness, the wonder, the sense of standing in the presence of something far greater than us.
In those moments, the editing process feels less like manipulation and more like memory-work and storytelling. I’m not trying to perfect the image, I’m trying to be honest with the representation.
To honor what the sky gave me. What I felt in my soul when I looked up and let the night seep in.
And so photography for me, is not just about capturing what the camera sees. It’s about translating the emotional experience into something visual—something that can be felt again.
My images are not records. They are stills of remembrance. They are what happens when memory, feeling, and light meet in the space of the frame.
In the end, the photograph is a vessel.
Not for what was merely there—
but for what moved through me
when I stood still,
looked up,
and felt something sacred in the dark.
.