Bring the Camera. Take the Photo.
Don’t complain.
My most valuable work is not my best work. It’s not a personal project with hours of conceptualization and production behind it. It’s not the frame I made right at that single, beautiful moment where photographic luck and skill collide. My most valuable work is not the series that helped a non-profit bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars or the concert photos from my early photography years that I continue to license.
No.
My most valuable work is held in the hands of people as they grieve, as they mourn, and as they heal. Not so much a photograph, but an affirmation that the person they love and miss was — is — exactly who they remember.
“He always loaded and unloaded the dishwasher every single day because he knew it was my least favorite chore.”
“One time she said that she wanted a car horn that sounded like a machine gun so everyone would hear it and just get out of her way!”
“It wasn’t so much that his breath was bad. It was just his. Like it had a dash of old man breath but mostly it was like cinnamon Red Hots.”
Will You Bring Your Camera?
Every photographer, no matter where they are in their career, experiences a moment when someone in their circle of…
