"Break" is one of those really interesting, super versatile words.  It has so many different meanings and nuances.  So many different positive and negative sentiments…

I'm feeling all of them right now

Let's see… it can be when you've done something for a long time, but it might be time for a pause.  (Yup, that one.)

Also, when you've put so much into something that you love… something you feel like you can't do without because it's a part of you… but it's starting to feel like it doesn't love you back… (That one too)

When you add an "s" — "breaks" — sometimes it's the dawning realization that as time has passed, some dreams have started seeming farther away rather than closer. If "to break" is the process, then maybe "breaks" is when it's happening to you right now.

Or maybe it's when the cracks in those dreams start to multiply.  "Breaks," as in so many flaws in what you were trying to manifest into the world.

Breaks can be positive, though.  Like when you decide to break from the past, because even though you couldn't avoid breaking, there's still time before "broken."

Or as in deciding that now is the time to break new ground, to find a new rhythm, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other

The gentle drift and lackadaisical shuffle of the seasons is surprisingly irresistible.  Day by day, minute by minute, second by second, the year just moseys along.  Sometimes shifting a little more abruptly every now and again, and other times, holding onto a long, long pause that feels like it might never end.

It's like when you look upward just to find a clear, blue, monochromatic sky… a still, but still vibrant, green, timeless tree that seems to just dismiss any passing breeze… a hawk soaring on the winds is the only thing to remind you that time is still moving.  That the day is still advancing.  That this season is for now, but not forever.

Photography can be like that too, sometimes.

They say that it's good to live in the moment.  But you can go too far with that, also.  Sometimes you put so much effort into the season that you're in, you kind of forget about where you've been, or where you might have been going.  You forget about the spring and the fall just because it happens to be summer right now.

Sometimes you don't realize that you've been stuck in a rut until something jolts you out of it.  Until you look around at familiar places and… wow… things changed, huh?  Or maybe, things are following their natural cycle; you just got stranded for a little bit.

Okay, I mean, sure: "stranded" is probably a little melodramatic.  But sometimes you look upward, and it's that same clear, monochromatic sky, but night has replaced the day.  Despite how timeless things felt, that tree has started preparing for the winter.

Somehow, the idea of preparing feels… foreign…

One of the pitfalls of documentary work is that you can get sucked into treating improvisation — reaction — as the right approach to every situation, and you can lose touch with the other ways to do photography.

In the beginning, you get dropped into situations that feel completely overwhelming.  There's too much happening, you can't be everywhere or shoot everything, and it feels like the story is just passing you by while you struggle just to even tread water.

Inevitably, you survive.  And foolishly, it can seem, you dive back in.  You learn to think on your feet.  You learn to understand which moments you've captured, which ones you missed, and what to shoot next.  Eventually, you somehow start coming up with really good, cohesive stories out of incredibly confusing and chaotic situations.  Being able to do that (and especially with any kind of consistency) is an accomplishment, full stop.

But, like, when was the last time I actually planned out a shoot before diving into it?  I don't remember.

When was the last time I took photos on my schedule, instead of on an event schedule?  When was the last time I found the right scene, instead of capturing the scene that I found in front of me?  I don't remember.

I don't remember

…and it feels like I've lost a part of myself…

I've been doing such a good job at learning how to catch and to capture, that I feel like I've forgotten my ability to create.

I used to spend countless hours taking long exposures at night until I got just the right picture.  Until what I saw on the LCD screen matched what I had already envisioned — what I already knew was possible in that scene.

I realized while I took this photo of these leaves that I had forgotten what colors can look like at night.  I had forgotten how delightfully vibrant they can be.  I had forgotten the joy of seeing — slowly — in the dark.  The excitement of feeling so many reds and blues and golden hues tugging at my heartstrings.

I struggled with this post, at first.  I hadn't shot anything interesting lately and there weren't going to be any events before I had to publish.  Long story short, I just didn't know what I was going to write about.  I didn't know what I could share that would be meaningful.

That fit of desperation is how I finally realized that the seasons had changed while I wasn't looking.  I decided to pick a concept, to shoot new work to illustrate that concept, and to build a post that was meaningful not by chance, but by choice.

The concept: I wanted to capture… no, sorry.  I wanted to create the changing of the seasons.  I wanted to manifest it, by finding and capturing the right scenes for a concept that I had already chosen.  I wanted to show what it looks like, and what it feels like, to find yourself after you suddenly realize that you were lost.

I wanted to show that sometimes the seasons just change.  But sometimes, you can change them back.

In talking with a lot of newer photographers over the years, the question of style has come up over and over.  What is their style?  How will they recognize it?  How will they know when they've spent enough time copying what other people have already done, and when it's time to take that foundation and build in novel directions?

I imagine that the answers that I and others have offered haven't ever felt particularly satisfying: You'll know it when you see it.  Eventually, something will call to you in a way that feels different from anything else you might have experienced recently.  At some point, you might find yourself drawn to create something in the world that seems obvious, but that you haven't seen others do quite how you wish it were done.

Follow that urge!  Sometimes, style is making the decisions that seem obvious to you, even if other people don't see in the same way.

For me, I like putting things in boxes.  Or really, in a frame of any kind of shape.  I don't know why.  I just know that when I see the perfect subject in the perfect frame, I have to take a picture.

And sometimes when I have the perfect subject, I try to find the perfect frame for it.  Maybe the frame is only two lines?  Still feels right for me.

And sometimes when the subject feels extra tiny, the shot feels extra right.

When I look at this picture, I just want to give it a big hug.  Again, I don't know why; I just answer to what calls to me.

A challenge that I struggle with is that often, what calls to you isn't exactly what makes sense for other people, or in other contexts.  And it usually feels unclear exactly how to balance stylistic choices with pragmatic ones.  How far does it make sense to compromise, and when does it stop feeling like my own work and vision?  Where's the line between "my work" and just "work that I've done"?

For instance, I love relatively small subjects in wide open vistas.  But those don't work well on Instagram.  So by and large, I crop way more than I'd like, and/or the posts that feel more like what I'd prefer don't do so well.

What to do?  I don't know.  I mean, I don't have all the answers.  But style can be difficult sometimes, and it's not always easy to know when the style should evolve, versus when it's time to find a different audience.

Another common refrain is that, in many cases, execution lags behind vision.

Sometimes it can take months or years of uninspiring pictures to get to the point of being proud of one's own work, and even then, it can feel like something that's "solid," but not "special."  Like, "this makes sense and I did a good job," but not "I feel in love with this work that I did."

And then, there's a while feeling… stuck… and unsure what to do about it.  Of being bored of what you're shooting, and not sure how to change that.  There can be a lot of existential frustration about, like, why it even makes any sense to put so much time and effort into an activity that doesn't feel particularly rewarding.

For me, that point is its own milestone.  Because that's when it's easiest to notice the glimpses of color amidst the seemingly endless gray clouds.  The flashes of brilliance in the darkness.  The sometimes-distant peaks that somehow make the time and effort feel worthwhile again.

Of course, usually those distant peaks are still distant.  But at least there's some direction now.  It might take some time to figure out how to capture a hummingbird in the perfect frame, but you can get there.  And the feeling of finally creating something that you love is… amazing.  And even then, it might not be perfect.  But photography is a journey, not a destination.

Actually, look.  What I'm trying to tell you is that style is joy.  Style is joy.

And when you find that same joy in new places, pay attention.

The smell is the first thing that gets to you.

I still remember walking towards this place two months ago.  The smell got me then, too. There's something unique about the smell of a fire.  It… "lingers" isn't quite the right word.  It's ever-present.  Even when it seems to disappear, it doesn't hide so much as it recoils into the shifting wind, waiting to pounce.

There's an extent to which — with an uncontrolled structure fire like that one — the smoke is the fire.  And the smell is the smoke.  In one moment, it just lingers.  In the next, it surrounds you, thick and inescapable.  It is the fire, but also, it's the threat of the fire.  The moments when it's barely noticeable are moments of uncertainty, because it's bound to return.

That smell is also the memory of the fire.  Both of the event itself, as well as of what it consumed.  It's a little funny that it's the literal remnants of what used to be, that bring me back to what it was like walking around in the dark, trying to stay out of the way, trying to understand what was happening, trying to gather enough puzzle pieces to assemble a meaningful story in the end.

But as a photojournalist, it's an unfamiliar feeling to return to the scene of a story.  Usually, the aftermath is covered from afar: Doing research.  Performing interviews.  Trying to understand both the bigger picture and the more nuanced details, but never really retracing those original footsteps.

But it's useful.  What can often seem mysterious or haunting or enchanting in the moment… it seems different when it's laid out, plain as day, after everything is over.  It's like the difference between visiting someone in a hospital and viewing them at a funeral.

In the hospital, there's uncertainty.  There's agency.  There's a chance for the story to take an unexpected turn.

But in the daylight, it's clear:
The heart is gone.

Whatever light that used to be behind those eyes, whatever warmth that used to inhabit those bones, it's gone.  Or maybe it's in some kind of afterlife, but either way, it's not here anymore.  On the night of the fire, there was always the chance that something else would be left. That something more would survive.  But today, it's a husk that will, in due time, return to the ground.

To ashes, as it were

Once what's done is done, life doesn't return completely to normal.  It never will.  It never does.  But some semblance of normalcy always comes back.

The next day.  The next month… year… are never exactly what came before, but they're also never completely different.  That's one of the things that's so fascinating about revisiting the scene of an event: the place and the people are both transformed, but there's always some thread of connection.  Of continuity.  There's always some tendril of lingering smoke that can bring you right back to the beginning.

Anxiety of passing time is how I knew.  I missed the shift from red to black to blue.

The last time I talked about plane travel, I marveled that "Out of an airplane window, I'm often surprised at how quickly the view can change, even as the framework stays the same.  But just as often, what's surprising is how the details of the view can be so consistent, even as we move through the environment at hundreds of miles per hour."

Life is just like that, sometimes.  You take one particular trip in the spur of the moment, and then after a decade has flown by, what shocks you isn't that you're still doing that same thing — taking that same trip, to those same places; visiting those same people…  But rather, the shock is in how odd it feels when you're forced to shift.  In how ingrained those familiar details have become, and how unsteady life feels when something what wasn't supposed to be a pattern — a ritual — suddenly has to wait.

Between the past and future, present ever lies.  I see myself through ever changing eyes.

The way I'm used to thinking about it, ritual has always felt like such a heavy thing.  Not a bad thing, but… something with so much weight to it.  It's attention to details; especially details that you stick to not because they're necessarily relevant in the moment, so much as because that's how it's always been done, and that's the way it's meant to be done.  It's a connection more to the past than to the present.  It's making sure to jump through the right hoops, in the right ways, so that your forebears would be proud.

I hadn't fully realized until today.  That I had not just lost, but found my way.

Starting from there, it's felt particularly confusing to realize that something that I want — something that I've always wanted — looks so much like a ritual, even though it doesn't feel that way.  Something where the details always felt fluid and fungible.  Where I could delay… but why would I want to?

How can a home be a ritual?  How can belonging be a ritual?  I think that's what still feels so foreign.

Of course, in a lot of ways, I guess the ritual isn't the place or the feelings.  It's the journey.

As seasons rise and wane our latent feelings follow.  The bitter sweet of change is hard to swallow.

And I guess the part of the ritual that's more necessary than enjoyable is when I leave those homes.  When each place where I belong — that is home, while I'm there — goes back to being somewhere I did belong.  Will belong.  Should belong.  When the belonging is in every tense except the present.

The tiny details of a visit help me feel: The love of a reheated home-cooked meal.

But the recurring joy of the ritual is when the future sense of belonging arrives into the present again, even as the presence of those other homes drift further into the past.

At last, at home, I land and write the final rhyme

I yearn to start the cycle yet another time

(Content warning: suicide)

I showed this picture to my wife, and her first words were "wow, I would frame this… except that it doesn't feel right framing someone's tragedy…"

And even though there were no reported injuries, there's something to that sentiment, isn't there?  In a lot of ways, it speaks to a few of the fundamental moral quandaries in documentary photography: who may — and who should — tell which stories?  And how?  Beyond that, what are the responsibilities of art to its relevant social and cultural contexts?

Those questions churned in the back of my head since that conversation, until a few weeks later, a different situation brought them into clearer focus…

Context is important.  The Vessel structure was first opened in March of 2019.  Its architecture was clearly intended as a focal point, and notably, included waist-high guardrails on all 16 levels of the 150-foot-tall structure.

The first person to die there by suicide jumped in February of 2020.  The structure was closed indefinitely in January of this year after the second and third people died similarly, in a span of 3 weeks.

When it eventually reopened in May, the suicide-reduction changes included the introduction of $10 tickets, as well as a requirement that visitors enter in groups of at least two. But no apparent changes to the guard rails…

When I heard the sirens this past Thursday afternoon, I didn't have any of that context; I just followed them on instinct.  And when I started taking pictures, I did the best I could to read the clues, and to document appropriately.

As time passed and I kept documenting, I heard snippets and witnessed moments that formed more of that story in my mind.  "D.o.A." as an ambulance backed away from the two white tents without any passenger.  And eventually, as an officer explained why a nearby resident would need to find another route, "suicide."

I feel like it can be tempting to illustrate the story with an image that focuses on the structure itself.  "Here was the location of the incident."  "One can imagine what might have happened."

But I think that's a mistake.  In a lot of ways, the greater story here is of the conflict between the aesthetics of architecture on one hand, and the responsibility of that architecture to the surrounding community on the other.  And whether intentional or not, coverage that focuses mostly on the architecture itself inherently chooses a side in that conflict — it invites the viewer to see the architecture concretely, and to leave the tragedy itself to be imagined as briefly as desired, if at all.

But I think it's also a mistake to just show the tragedy — two white tents for one fallen teenager — without really anchoring it to the place.  Because again, it creates the sense that this tragedy really could have been any other.  That the focus is, perhaps, death by suicide in general, and not the more specific theme of deaths by suicide that originate from this specific structure.  It allows the viewer to again escape the conflict that is inherent in the question of "why does this keep happening here in particular?"

When you put the pieces together — when you literally put them in the same picture, I think it helps the viewer to internalize that conflict. To feel, in a more visceral sense, the tension between the beauty and the tragedy.  And maybe to also feel the strain between Vessel's aesthetics and the responsibility that its developer might have to the surrounding community.

My goal, in these cases, is to find images that invite — or force — the viewer to decide for themselves whether or not this beauty is worth this kind of tragedy.

I think photographers also have a responsibility to the communities where they work.  Sometimes it's clearer-cut, as in the Vessel situation, and sometimes it's a little more opaque.

What's my responsibility around covering this fire?  I really don't know.  I think it depends on the underlying story, right?  And it can be hard to tell a story just based solely on what happens when it's time to take the picture.

That's why, as a documentary photographer, you try to cover your bases and shoot everything.  You try to gather all the nouns and the verbs, as it were, so that you'll be able to assemble them later into something that makes sense and holds some truth.

Which brings us back to the original questions.  Is it okay for me to tell this story? Should I tell it?  If so, how?  I mean, what even is the story here?

And a little farther afield, what is the value of art that isn't anchored to a story?  If I capture an image that manages to combine the beauty and the horror of uncontrolled flames, does that have inherent value?  And what is the cost, especially socially and culturally, of decoupling the image from the specific tragedy behind it?

To be clear, I don't know.  I don't know.  But my mind is still churning.  And if you have any thoughts, dear reader, I'd love to hear them in the comments below.

Over the last year, I've learned that music is just like photography — it matters when an experience surrounds you.  Seeing a great landscape photo on a small screen isn't quite like seeing it through a window, and seeing it through a window isn't quite like being in the middle of it.  Because looking "at," is different from looking "out," is different from looking all around.

And there's no amount of screen resolution or color or dynamic range that can replicate what it's like to simply make that picture bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until you feel dwarfed by what you're witnessing.

Music is just like that.  Seeing a concert on a screen is different from seeing it from a seat in the distance, and that's different still from being in the thick of it, hearing singing and shouting and just… sensing movement and humanity in every direction.

But music is also different.  Photography can capture a moment that will transport you to places you've already been, and it's wonderful for drawing comparisons between different places and situations and contexts that don't seem to parallel each other, at first.

But some experiences are so novel that photography alone can't get you there.  And sometimes it's because they rely too much on the different senses:  There's no picture that's loud enough to put the thump of a bass drum in your chest for the first time.  And even after you've felt it, the recollection still isn't quite like the real thing.

I missed this.

I'm grateful for all the different approaches we found over the last year to still make and share and experience music.  But I missed this.

As Bay Area restaurants started to re-open for delivery service last year, I had the idea to work with local restaurants to capture new food imagery that was more relevant to the pandemic experience — a lot more food in containers, and a lot less food on commercial service dishware. The project never really got off the ground, for a variety of reasons, but my market research started to raise a few interesting questions about the field, and about myself.

The moment you put the terms "food" and "photography" together, it seems like the vast majority of what comes up are pictures of finished food items.  And all of the "how-to" content I found was exclusively focused on that perspective — here's how you style food better.  Here's how you light food better. Try these angles or techniques for better pictures of your food.  And so on…

But having shot in friends' kitchens on dozens of occasions, as well as a few stints covering a commercial kitchen, I know that my own approach has always focused on preparation, not consumption.  The stories that I tell hew more towards what it's like to cook, instead of what it's like to be cooked for.  What it's like to create, rather than just what it's like to consume.

But the moment you put "food" and "videography" together, the script flips.

Suddenly the preparation is automatically the focus.  Eggs crack.  Ingredients pour.  Pans toss.  Food doesn't just sit; it sizzles…

It occurred to me that my approach to food photography is more akin to a videographer than a photographer.

Just like I mentioned in "When NASCAR felt like home again," it's always a peculiar feeling to discover unexpected contexts that feel like "home."  But, I mean, the shoe seemed to fit:  When I show preparation, my focus is on motion, not just stillness.  It's on the small details that show you the experience and skill that help a person to cook well.  I try to show the movements that become second-nature, but that are often so hard to teach.

Even the "static" shots that I capture tend to imply motion and context. In video, movement is the norm.  Stillness, the exception.  Likewise with how I approach photography — the purpose of a "still" shot isn't to show or embody stillness, so much as to emphasize motion.

And the purpose of an isolated food shot isn't to show the food, so much as to imply the presence of the person who made it, and the process by which it was made.

Most importantly, I typically aspire to share stories, not just isolated snapshots.  For me, what I want to show in a frame isn't just objects — whether delicious or not.  But rather, I want to show the characters behind those objects.  Their aspirations and frustrations.  Their history and future.  Their personality and style.

My food photos are about people more than they're about food.

So imagine my bewilderment when 10 minutes into my research for this post, I found a videographer teaching so many aspects of my own approach.  It was at once comforting and unsettling…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbAmzc0sb6w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zselTkZciUk

So, I mean, the next question is "why?"  Why is my perspective on the food world shared by so many videographers, but so few photographers?  Does that imply anything about my work?

The short answer is that I don't know.  But I think the even more fundamental (if somewhat leading) question is: what is it about video as a medium that encourages my style of work, and does that imply anything about how I could make my work more meaningful or more accessible?  What lessons can I bring from the video world back into my photography?

For now, I think I'll keep that as some food for thought.

Imagine striving to follow a compass as far North as you can make it.  Every line of latitude feels like a milestone.  A hallmark.

Sure, there are setbacks — sometimes geography will force you to traverse sideways before you can keep moving forward.  Sometimes, you'll even have to turn back and find a different route.  But the progress is definite.  And with each new milestone, the clarity of your purpose intensifies.

An irony, that also intensifies, is that the closer you get to the goal, the less your compass actually guides you.  Sometimes it wavers and falters in ways that never happened farther back.  And once you actually Make It, the direction it points to is… anywhere else.  Just not here.

So do you stop, or do you keep moving?  And if you move, how can you possibly judge and evaluate your sense of progress?  Was finding the North Pole worth it in the first place?  Was the compass really guiding you in a direction that mattered?  How would life have been different if you had travelled due East?  Or West?

What if the compass was meaningless all along?

That's kind of what it can feel like to try to find your path in sports photography.  But in sports, they call those lines of latitude "The Big Leagues."

They come in different shapes and sizes, but there's almost always a hierarchy.  And regardless of which step you're on, each next step in that hierarchy constantly beckons.  More money.  More prestige.  More opportunity.

And just like that Northern trek, it can be so easy to miss what we lose as we strive to answer that siren call.  Usually the Big Leagues also require more sacrifice.  More risk.  Often, more conformity.  Sometimes, less humanity.

I find that there's also often a tendency to become more conservative in those new spaces.  The sense that we were admitted creates a peculiar sense of obligation — to reduce our work to the most-easily-accessible common denominator — in order to show that we were worth the risk.  That tendency is coupled with a fear — that we might squander that one chance if the most unique aspects of our work don't resonate.

Of course, that's part of the challenge of working in a situation with unknown expectations.  How much do you show that you have the skill to play by the rules, versus showing that you have the creativity to bend or break the rules in a way that makes sense?  Is there a difference between the work that got you here and the work that would keep you here?

The goal, I think, is to turn a once-in-a-lifetime chance into regular, ordinary work.  To reset our standard, as it were.

The challenge is to do so with our soul intact.

Let's be clear, though.  I'm not here to give anyone concrete advice.  After all, I'm just as in the middle of this journey as any other photographer.  But I think it's often interesting to reflect on where I've been, where I am now, where I'd like to go, and the decisions that are tied up in all of this.

Where is my soul?

I've long approached sports photography from the perspective of truth before beauty — my goal is to tell meaningful stories.  And if I can do that in a way that is beautiful, all the better.  But it doesn't mean that I shy away from telling stories that need to be ugly.  And it doesn't mean that I necessarily make ugly stories beautiful, even if the opportunity arises.

One aspect of traditional sports photography that's never quite worked for me is the idolization of individuals.  I feel like there's a general expectation for, say, 90% of sports photos to focus on the individual.  Here is one person experiencing the thrill of victory.  The agony of defeat.  And even in the team context: here is the singular person who led this team to victory.  Who couldn't stave off defeat.  Here's the same picture you've seen a thousand times, but this time with a couple different faces.

But, like, the reason I got away from photojournalism is because there are so many stories that can't be captured in a single frame.  Context and nuance matter.  I care about telling the fuller, more nuanced, more relevant versions of those stories.

But I feel like the canonical ideal of sports photography is to eliminate visual context at every corner.  "Frame tighter.  Crop tighter.  Blur that background into oblivion.  Get rid of useless clutter.  Show 'peak emotion'…"

What about the confusion after an athlete does something that they still don't believe?  The quiet in-between moments that often characterize the actual experience of competition?  The acts of camaraderie that don't make sense in the context of "competition," but make perfect sense in the context of "community?"

What about the tension between an amazing athlete and an environment that wants her out of the limelight?

I think part of my role is to understand that living through those moments is so much of what has made sports feel worthwhile for me, as an athlete.  And so, I need to keep noticing and highlighting and sharing those stories, even as stakes rise.

I think part of my role is to recognize if and when I get to a space where the important things aren't valued, and to have the patience and the discipline to change directions, even when the compass is still pointing North.

I am still me.

It feels weird to say that.  Or rather, it feels weird to have doubted that.  But I guess that's what this past year has been: doubts about assumptions that used to come naturally.

Let's rewind: 1 year and 1 week ago, I strained my hamstring at pole vault practice.  Again.  And I decided it was time for a change.  Two days later, I sat down at a friend's table with a box of tissues and wrote "Leaving Love Behind."  A few days later, I sketched out some ideas in my composition book, went to the photo studio, and took a self-portrait that felt like it fit the gravity of that moment.

I wrote at the time that "I don't really know what the future will hold," but I figured that I would figure things out in time.  There's no way I could have imagined the changes that were in store, for all of us, but I was dedicated to making the best of an unfamiliar situation, and I'm pretty happy with how the last year has gone.

It's so difficult to understand what you might miss because of the things you love…  In college, pole vault was 3 hours every weekday, plus maybe 8 or 12 hours every Saturday, or maybe Sunday, or maybe both days every now and again.

By contrast, once I settled into 2 training sessions per week (running and technique), plus an hour of stretching and general strength, it felt like nothing.  It felt like I was barely doing what I needed to stay fit for competition.

But it only felt like nothing.  Realistically, it meant that during season, I was booked for two days a week, every single week.  And as a result, I was hesitant to commit to spending regular time with even the people I liked most.

To be clear though, even though I didn't realize the full magnitude of the cost at the time, even knowing what I know now, it's a cost I still would have decided to pay.  Everything has a price.

That said, as the pandemic and then the lockdowns took hold, I leaned hard into regular walks with friends.  I still had so many questions about how my body might change after pole vault, but I did my best to let those anxieties go, and to let my body be whatever it was going to become.  During the walks, I tried to ignore the sense of exercise, and revel in the company of dear friends.  I tried to slow my mind down, live a little more in the moment, and let those friends take me places I had never been.

In the months that followed, I spent a lot less time sprinting down runways, and a lot more time walking up roads and hills.  Less time focused on accomplishing technical goals and more time just… taking my time.

Less time looking up at crossbars, and more time just looking up.

I spent enough time visiting and then re-visiting places that I went from seeing how things looked, to noticing how things were changing as the lockdown progressed.  I got to see rose bushes aspire to new heights at San Jose's Heritage Rose Garden.

And an egret hanging out on a tiny island during a low-water period at the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge.

Over the years, large swaths of Don Edwards have shifted pretty noticeably from salty marshland towards a drier, more arid existence.  And the hot dry months later in mid-to-late 2020 clearly contributed to that shift.  But as the rain came in fits and spurts toward the end of the year, I started seeing water in more of the places that I expected.  In some ways, I think it paralleled the somewhat misguided sense of a return to normalcy that the rest of the world felt at around the same time.

This was also my first time seeing the Coyote Creek water-management system at work.  During a subsequent visit, where a series of usually-open water gates had been closed, the water level rose to 5 or 6 feet above the level in this picture.

The adventures this past year also brought me back into the kitchen.  I've always enjoyed cooking, but it's a habit I had gotten out of over the years.

But between spending most days at home, and not feeling the requirement to eat as soon as possible after every workout, I found more time to make mistakes and be creative in the kitchen again.  I rediscovered the patience to page through a book while waiting for water to boil.  The eager anxiety of waiting for a pan to reach the right temperature before starting an edible time trial.

All things told, there have been a lot of endings this past year.  Some of them were a long time coming; so many others were far too soon.

But there were a lot of beginnings as well.

A year ago, my life as a pole vaulter ended.  In the year since then, I've found so much satisfaction in the things that have started to fill a space that I didn't even realize could be emptied.  I'm still looking forward

Imagine exploring an unfamiliar environment.  Everything seems new and unexpected, even if you feel twinges of familiarity here and there.  But there's this feeling of shock and confusion that happens when you round one more unfamiliar corner, only to realize that you suddenly recognize your surroundings.  That all this time, you've actually been closer to home than seemed possible, just moments prior.

That was NASCAR, for me.

Now don't get me wrong; I've watched plenty of NASCAR over the years, and there've definitely been times when the whole thing had felt like it made sense.

But stereotypes have a way of pulling you away from the things you used to enjoy.  In part because they're just pernicious like that, but also because they often have a kernel of truth, and sometimes it makes you worry…

But when the Toyota / Save Mart 350 rolled around in June of 2014, I finally had a chance to look back and recapture some of those feelings I thought I had left behind.

Going to my first NASCAR race in person, after years of focusing on other more "contemporary" car racing series, felt surprisingly like a homecoming.  I was expecting to feel out of place, but I ended up feeling like this is where I really belonged.  Like this was the place where I wouldn't have to try in order to fit.

Seeing crew members throw a football before the race triggered the first pang of familiarity.  With every other pro race I've been to, the pre-race period always carried a sense of constant tension and turmoil, even when it's masked under a superficial stillness.

At this race, there was a casual nature to things that I'd never really experienced elsewhere.  If I had to describe it a different way, it felt like the difference between telling yourself "be calm," versus not even needing to tell yourself that.

There's also a mythos around numbers as a form of identity that speaks to me.  I grew up hearing about the legend of Pelé, #10 on the Brazilian men's national soccer team, then Maradona, Ronaldo, and all the greats who followed.

I grew up playing soccer on traveling teams up through my teens, and when uniform assignments rolled around, #10 was not a number to be taken lightly.  Rather, it was a standard that you had to live up to.  And the knowledge of which numbers were revered, and which were just standard fare, formed a fundamental part of that culture.

There's a culture around NASCAR's car numbers that is much the same.  Some car numbers are emblematic of specific drivers or teams, and fans will rally around those numbers in a way that just doesn't happen in other series.  For instance, just last year, NASCAR published a 70-year retrospective on the history of the #24 car.  You don't see that in most other car racing series, but for me, it feels just as natural as reading, after all these years, why so many of the greats wore that #10 jersey.

There's also a commonly-held perception of NASCAR being really boring.  An entry from Urban Dictionary describes NASCAR as, I quote, "Turning left in a Chevrolet for 4 hours."

And, I mean, I get why people would think that, because it's a sentiment that's shared by another of my favorite sports: cycling.  Having spent hundreds of hours watching Tour de France stages over a good decade or so of my life, I get it.  It's kind of like a Catch-22: if you don't watch enough cycling to understand why you'd want to watch that much cycling, then why wouldn't you just watch something else?  NASCAR is the same: if you come into it with the preconceived sense that it's never going to be interesting, then you're probably not going to see what's interesting about it, other than maybe a large pileup every now and again.

But that's kind of like watching a game of chess and remarking "I don't see why it's so interesting to see people move pieces of plastic around a board."  Or "I don't see why someone would bake when it's just putting flour into an oven."  The unilateral focus on the most superficial aspects of the race makes it easy to miss the skill, the strategy, and the luck that actually makes it fun to watch and to participate.

But walking around the race in person brought me back to so many of those details.  Race strategy is always a crucial aspect, and I happened to notice a spotter for one of the teams keeping an eye on turn 1 of the course…

Pit stop strategy is also a huge piece of the puzzle.  How many laps can a tire last?  How do you decide between putting an extra lap or two on a set of tires (which can help with race position as other competitors pit earlier), versus being able to run those two laps faster on a fresh set of tires?

It's one thing to know that it happens, but it's something different to see the details of it right in front of you.  The TV broadcasts show the pitstops, but they usually cut away from the strategic analysis (of tire temperatures and remaining rubber thickness, in this case) that happens right after the tires come off the car.

Damage repairs are also a strategic balance: The more time you put into a repair, the better your car might be for the rest of the race; but the less time you put into the repair, the sooner you'll be back out on track.  So how much is the right amount of time?

Plus, the details can matter.  The more bodywork you remove as part of the repair, the slower the car will be, the less downforce and grip it might have, and the more asymmetric the handling will become.  But leaving flapping bodywork in place has the potential to cause tire punctures, which will slow you way down at best, and might even end your race.

It's a thrill to see teams improvise the answers to those and so many other questions every time the car stops in the pit box.

And that's not even to mention the time-honored tradition of teams hunting for corner cases in the rulebook that will give them an extra advantage.

As a child of the 90's, Jeff Gordon and his technicolor DuPont-sponsored car were fixtures of my childhood.  It still feels surreal that 22 years after his first race in the #24, Jeff Gordon would finish second at the first NASCAR race I attended in person.  Sooner or later, though, it comes time to move on.  Every homecoming ends.

But seeing someone at that same age, still wearing that same number, reminded me that homecomings aren't just about looking back.  They're also about witnessing the people who are still looking forward.

"To me, the sounds of a wok are very… very homey?  They may or may not be pleasant, objectively… But the sound of, like, when the steel hits steel?  Like, when you're moving things around… And you know, when you bang on it sometimes to get things off the spatula?

"It all just goes with the… kind of the spirit of the wok, y'know?"

Some things are difficult to put into words.  And in the times I've been fortunate enough to watch my friend Annie cook, what's stood out for me have been the clarity of her intentions, the creativity of her choices, the pride in her craft, and other traits that speak of the soul of cooking, in a way that words don't always reach.

Annie's cooking style feels like a combination of old and new, traditional and experimental.  For her, the experimentation mainly happens with the ingredients.  In contrast, she says "I think the techniques that you would cook with in a wok are traditional… I don't deviate from those techniques."  The statement carries the firmness of a deeply-held conviction.  And the sometimes-arbitrary-seeming juxtaposition of rigidity and flexibility feels so familiar for me, and so reminiscent of a thousand different immigrant stories.

I once noticed that same sense of familiarity in Miles Morales' connection with his family in "Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse."  I wrote, "It's so much tension, and so much love.  It's the simultaneous excitement and guilt of standing on a foundation that your parents built, while reaching for something else.  It's the bitter-sweet of trying to appreciate and accept the gifts that they offered, but trying to reject them in the same moment."

It can be difficult to let your roots anchor you, without also letting them hold you back.  And a lot of times, it can look like an arbitrary compromise when someone finds a balance that feels right.

Personally, I admire Annie's balance of those two forces in her own cooking style.  I remembered thinking that some steps of her cooking process felt more like a ritual, and as she recounted the steps later on, it renewed that sense.

"The techniques are so inherently… Chinese.  I always get the wok really nice and hot.  And then I always put the oil in.  And then I'll swirl the oil... you know, there's a long yau [烺油/滑鍋] process of doing that.  And then I throw things in there to cook at a high heat, you know, with a fair amount of movement inside the wok…

Rituals always embody some connection to the past.  They incorporate lessons learned over years and decades and generations.  My sense was that Annie's cooking rituals connected her to her own heritage, in a way, even though she describes herself as someone who isn't particularly sentimental.

She learned to use a wok from her mom, and even before that, it was an ever-present part of her life growing up.  So when she discovered a disused wok in her friend's kitchen, she "borrowed" it.  That was twelve years ago.

"It was my friend's wok, and he just didn't use it enough, so I reappropriated it? … It is a carbon steel wok, it feels very solid, it feels good, and it also reminds me of the wok that my family had growing up, which is also a carbon steel wok with these, like, loop handles..."

That connection to her family continued with the only picture in her kitchen.  It felt somewhat symbolic to me, that the person who had taught Annie to use a wok would be watching over as she cooked.  But her explanation was a little different:
"It's more, like, intuitive.  Like, I just like it there?  I think when my brother gave it to me, it may have been in [this] kitchen?  He gave it to me, actually, last Christmas... He might have brought it over and we had a meal together, after going and foraging for mushrooms the day before…

"I'm not really, like, a pictures-of-people type of person… but I really like having that one there... It feels nice when I look at it."

But if we're talking symbolism, it feels like Annie's casual mention of mushroom foraging epitomizes just how easily she blends her own style and flair with the heritage that grounds it.

Mushrooms themselves are pretty common in Chinese cuisine, but Annie's particular interest in them goes beyond that.  With a laugh, she confirmed, "Yeah, I really like mushrooms."

For a few years, she's delved into mycology, learning how to positively identify all variety of mushrooms, and has gone on a number of group foraging excursions to practice and hone those skills.  And back at home, her cuisine tends to incorporate them in a whole host of different forms.  In a list that's clearly incomplete, she rattles off dried mushrooms, mushroom powder, mushroom hot cocoa, sliced cremini mushrooms and pesto pasta…

"If there are things I can get mushrooms into, then they usually make it in there."

I got a better sense of how she uses them after asking what she would substitute, if forced to.

"Depends on the mushroom… I was using those king oyster mushrooms for body and bite and… texture.  But I also use mushrooms mainly for, like, flavor?  Like, shiitake mushrooms for flavor.  I use, like, a mushroom powder for flavor…

"If I didn't have mushrooms on hand…  Maybe tofu… but that doesn't really add much.  Like, mushrooms are umami.  So it's really different.  What else would I use for umami…?  I mean, y'know, like, you get a good sear on something, and you add those flavor components…"

The conversation turns to the Maillard reaction, and then the idea of searing cabbage comes to mind as her exploration continues.

"Depending on what the dish was, maybe even, like, potatoes?  I've been roasting potatoes and that's got a really, really satisfying, like, crispy exterior, like crunchy, crispy exterior and like, soft, pillowy interior.  Yeah… tomatoes?  Tomato paste can also bring a lot of flavor, especially if you fry it up… And then you can add other elements, like, whatever protein you wanna use…"

The original juxtaposition comes back to mind.

"Sometimes I'm experimenting with dishes, and it feels more, like, experimenting, or exploring.  And it's a little bit more exciting, like, 'Oh, what am I gonna get?!'.  And when I'm cooking dishes that I'm really familiar with, there's like a… there's like, a comfort?  And maybe that's when it's a little bit more ritualistic…"

Annie mentioned that an exploration that she particularly enjoys is using food to connect with other people's food culture.

"I love, also, making food that… that is special to other people, and familiar to other people, and maybe not so familiar to me.  And sometimes I do a good job of it, and that's a good feeling.  And sometimes, y'know, it's not very… authentic or reminiscent for them at all.  And that's okay, but, y'know… it's still fun to try… 'cause it gets me in a different mindset, of different staples than I would use."

The idea of cultural fusion, whether in food… language… style of dress… it's always incredibly personal.  For reasons that are difficult to explain, certain combinations feel perfectly fine, while others feel almost sacrilegious.  Some rules feel inherently intuitive, and others feel daft and overbearing.  That is the nature, I think, of trying to join something novel and unfamiliar with something else that lives close to your heart.

What I've come to appreciate about Annie's approach is how much joy she takes in her cooking explorations, and how eager she is to find unfamiliar cooking traditions that she can learn from and incorporate into her own style.  How she manages to keep her kitchen filled with the traditions and heritage that she comes from, but in the same moment, mix them with other ideas that those ancestors might have never imagined.

Towards the tail end of a brief explanation on wok cooking, Annie had emphasized that a wok is "an implement… it's a tool…"  And I think it's easy to see the spirit of the wok as the heritage and traditions that the tool calls forth and embodies.

But her approach reminds me that another element of that spirit might be the ability to use it as a tool to connect with other people.  An implement that calls forth something near to your heart, and something near to theirs, and that helps to fuse those into something that can feel dear to everyone involved.

A few years ago, I wrote "Life, Death, and Lack of Closure," about a seemingly-inevitable trap of living life after becoming an inadvertent historian: that because inaction — the decision to not document something — is in itself a form of curation, you never really escape from the anxiety of not putting time into documentary work.  That is, the awareness that you could be documenting things, but aren't, lingers like a specter throughout everyday life.  Even as I described it then, I still feel it now.

I've gotten better at seeing the opportunity and not just the cost — "I am deciding to be present in this moment," rather than just "I'm deciding not to document this moment."  But I think some people have a sense of ease at letting moments pass by which I've never managed to recapture.

But I just discovered a new form of this trap.

When I wrote the first post, I mentioned that a particularly insidious version of the trap happens when life pulls you away from giving complete focus to some documentary opportunity, because… you know… life.  And then when the opportunity to do better unexpectedly vanishes, a sense of frustration and second-guessing arise in the wake.  "Why didn't I realize that would be my only chance?"  "Why didn't I focus more on doing a better job?"

Back in 2005, I was fortunate to visit the Arecibo radio telescope, DSLR in hand.  I was excited.  I was prepared.  And I had the time to focus on the documentary task, and to apply my best effort to the opportunity…

And then, a few weeks ago, the National Science Foundation announced plans to decommission the telescope.  And somehow, I felt all those same pangs.  It was the same sense of frustration, but the cause was different.

I had done my best at the time, but why wasn't my best… better?  Why did I make so many mistakes?  Why did I waste so much time on basic challenges?

The sentiment is particularly frustrating because looking back at my own work, I see the seeds of the skills that I've come to develop in the years since then.  I see the beginnings of what I've come to value in my present-day approach to photography.

And usually, I'm good at looking back and seeing those foundations.  But this version of the trap ignores the foundation, and emphasizes the emptiness above it.  When the opportunity disappears to bring my current skills to bear on that same documentary task, the sense of loss is what I feel the most.

I've known for awhile that a decline in ability can tear at a person's sense of self worth.  But the extent to which improvement can do the same is still a new lesson for me.  And it still hurts.

It's kind of funny to think that the last time I saw my DSLR, it was looking back at me.  February 29th.  My life had just taken a huge turn — after 22 years of pole vault, I decided to retire, and I went to the photo studio to take some self-portraits that would hopefully capture how unmoored and adrift I felt in that moment.

Little did I know, another huge turn was just around the corner.  Little did I know that "unmoored and adrift" was going to be the theme of the year.

After so many years of sprinting, it was a double-surprise that I've spent this whole year at walking pace.  Looking down.  Up.  Around.  Generally, not worrying about moving quickly, and trying not to worry that everything was suddenly moving so slowly.

I reveled in walks with friends, which were among the few forms of in-person socialization that were still allowed under our shelter-in-place order.  And during those walks, I found new perspectives on the world.  I found that I suddenly had the time to appreciate moments that had often felt so brief up until that point.

And as I continued to spend less time out and about, and more time at home, I took more of that time to appreciate the small vignettes that I could find right outside…

Or right inside…

But gradually, "sudden shift" transformed into "new normal," and my perspective on the world had also shifted.  I had somehow acclimatized to pandemic life.  And it was time to shift again.  I tried not to stop looking down, but I also started looking up a bit more.

And I started looking out a bit more.

Maybe it's time to keep looking?

A gentle giant rumbled in the sky
In older times, when weather was a friend
With eyes shut tight, I'd feel the wind drift by
But patterns, large and small, began to bend

I grew up in the midwest, and it's a place that leaves an impression on you. Winters were cold.  Summers were warm.  Fall was the browns, oranges, and ochres of falling leaves and pine needles.  And springs were the green and the crisp, bright sunlight that promised the start of the next cycle.

It rarely just rained.  More typically, there was rain with a deep, rolling, distant reverberation of thunder, at times interspersed with a sharper, but still amicable sound of nearer thunderclaps.  It wasn't a crack, so much as the sound of tearing a giant piece of paper, as the vibrations continue to echo through the material itself.

Those were the days when "go inside when it's lightning outside" was something that adults said, and that you did because you were told; not because you actually understood what could happen.

Sometimes, during the perfect thunderstorm, the gentle, humid breeze would feel so wonderful amidst the chorus of pitter-patters emanating from the raindrops landing all around you…

An angry serpent struck with lightning speed
In recent times, when weather was a foe
With eyes shut tight, I hoped it would recede
And though it did, its cost would only grow

There's something about the sense that a bolt of lightning could have struck you, personally, that is utterly chilling.  The sound of wind whistling past an open window is what woke me up first, a bit after 3 am.  I looked outside to see tree branches swaying frantically in the gusts, and decided to just listen.  Echoes of my childhood rambled forth, as I recalled those rain-slicked breezes.

But this was different.  Bolts of lightning outside were bright enough that they illuminated the room through mostly-closed wooden slat blinds.  Moments later, a staccato clap of thunder was so loud that I literally jumped out of bed — I was in fight-or-flight by the time my feet touched the floor.

The distant rumble of childhood was gone.  This was something else.

Betrayal is to sleep and wait for dawn
But wake amidst a choking orange haze

A few weeks after that night, I woke up again and… everything was something else. There's some cruel irony in the fact that the colors of autumn — that always felt like a pause before an inevitable rebirth a few months later — feels so final and so unfamiliar this time around.

My heart still yearns, but simpler days are gone
My brain still knows: betrayal goes both ways.

But it's perhaps fitting that they're also the colors of a regular cycle starting to run off-kilter, after being out-of-balance for such a long time.

I spent most of the rest of that week tracking down materials and building air filtration setups for friends and family; trying to give them new tools to survive what is likely to become an increasingly common part of our cycle, as the climate continues to change.  Rationally, I feel like I understand that humans are a large part of how things got to be this way.  But sometimes, emotions like to keep a foot in that distant past…

I never thought I'd see the reign of dust.
I never thought the sky would break my trust.