Since those days, I’ve come to realize that the most meaningful results rarely come from aiming for an ideal output. More often than not, they stem from a willingness to mess up, take notes, give yourself a break to think, and allow the mistake to actually be the thing that leads to the defining moment; the discovery, the epiphany, or the photographic composition that tugs at you in a way you didn’t know was possible.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the drive that comes with a tendency for perfection is exactly the type of thing that helped make me into the photographer I am today. I had this unexplainable force pushing me to rinse and repeat until I got the image I’d wanted. It’s a compulsion that kept me showing up day-after-day, regardless of how much I may have sucked the day before. Anything less than perfect wasn’t good enough, so I showed up until it was.

But while it certainly came with its upsides (there was no way in hell I’d quit until I learned the skill I’d been working toward), I often found myself held back by this need to have everything dialed in “just right” before the world could see what I’d been working on.

And eventually, this tendency led to less experimentation, less iteration, and a whole lot of fear about trying something outside of what I’d proven I could do well already. Because why fix what isn’t broken?

But a quick look at what some of my favorite photographers were doing exposed an entirely different approach. One where play and experimentation were at the core of everything. The photographers I admired most were the ones who created their own distinct style by breaking compositional rules, working in less-than-ideal conditions, and allowing limitations to be their opportunity to attempt something they weren’t entirely sure they could make work. Put simply, they made a habit of chasing imperfection.

So a few years back, I decided to change up my process. When I had a shoot, eighty percent of the photos I’d take would be in my typical style. Same rules, same formula and calculated approach that’d always worked well before.

And then the other twenty percent were my chance to experiment. I told myself these photos didn’t need to see the light of day. They wouldn’t have to end up in a client’s gallery if they didn’t deserve to make the cut. They’d simply be my opportunity to throw some spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

This took the pressure off these images needing to deliver and just made them a little side-quest. And in the process, I had an interesting realization.

While it took every ounce of self control in my body to fight the instinct to aim for perfection with the twenty percent, I realized that some of my most compelling photos from a session were the ones where I took a “done is better than perfect approach”.

I tried photographing from atypical angles I wouldn’t have ever considered. I attempted unusual compositions that spat in the face of the rule of thirds. I opted for the harsh light. I allowed for motion blur. And somehow, the experimental photos often ended up being better than the reliable eighty percent.

Interestingly, it wasn’t just me who felt that way. Gallery after gallery, these were the images that clients gravitated toward.

The eighty percent? The reliable images? From a technical standpoint, they were solid. But the experimental lot? They had a sense of dimension and emotion that took the viewer to a different place.

Sure, plenty of the experimental images weren’t great. Many didn’t make the cut for getting added to the galleries. But the ones that moved me and my clients? They were almost always the experiments.

I tend to think it’s because the experimental photos were an artistic reflection of who we are as humans: ever-evolving. There’s something incredible that happens when we seek out imperfection in our imagery and chase what we don’t fully understand. We bring the humanity of the art form up to the surface.

And now that I’ve seen what the imperfect can do, chasing after it has become the obsession. Both in photography and in everyday life. Small experiments. Tiny challenges. Bite-sized opportunities to do something a little differently; something that ultimately ends up having a pretty big impact.

I’m a type A person by nature, and I’ve always struggled with being able to sit still, especially during moments when I’m asked to simply relax. There’s this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that what I should really do is turn the present into a productive moment.

I’ve been on this hamster wheel longer than I can remember. Learning photography while working my 9-5. Photographing full-time, but adding another project on the side to sprinkle in some variety. Hell, writing here, while trying to work a full schedule and be a present parent (oh, and also, trying to get out and do the things I love, like hiking and painting and reading). It’s a lot.

I used to tell myself, just keep at it, and eventually you’ll hit a day where you can genuinely just slow down. As if somehow, I’d just know that I’d done enough to have earned it. But if I’m truly honest with myself, that day’s not coming.

It’s up to me to simply say, okay, it’s time to slow down. I can’t show up everywhere, at all times, for everyone, and still have some of myself left. You can’t burn both ends of the candle and come out unscathed. It just doesn’t work that way.

So here I am, sitting at my computer, typing out these words that have taken me a couple decades to arrive at: there’s a case for slowing down. And that’s what has to happen here.

But what does that even look like? This is my plan going forward.

Reading a book (preferably fiction) every night before bed, rather than finishing up last-minute work tasks. No, it doesn’t have to be a “productive” book. No, I don’t have to finish the chapter before calling it a night.

Digging into a craft. At the moment, it’s painting; something I haven’t really done in over a decade. but I’d also love to get into some home-related crafts. Perhaps woodworking?

Incorporating running as a release. I have an interesting relationship with running. I’ll pick it up for a few months, become hyperfixated on it, and then stop for another few months before starting the cycle over again. I think part of the problem is my all-or-nothing attitude (classic Type A). But I don’t need to beat a personal record. I simply need to run for me. For the freedom and release that can only come from the repetition of one foot in front of the other.

And lastly, choosing to write here every other week, instead of weekly. I love Substack. It’s genuinely one of my favorite places to hang out. I’ve met some of the most incredible people on this platform. And it’s because of you guys that I try to write something genuinely meaningful each week.

But if I’m being entirely honest, the amount of heart and effort that goes into doing this weekly is a bit more than I can balance at the moment. I want to ensure everything I write makes you feel something, learn something, or feel connected with something. And I can only do that if I slow down and pace myself.

We can spend our entire lives on the hamster wheel, but what happens at the end of our days, when we look back on it all? Is this genuinely what we want to remember? The constant hustle? The never-ending desire for achievement?

For myself, that’s not it.

I want the people I shared my days with to know that I saw them. That I heard them. That I cared for them with all my heart.

I want to know that I spent my free time pursuing art, without trying to make it into some sort of business (because not everything needs a monetary reason to exist).

I want to know I spent my days feeling the sun on my skin and the wind in my hair. That I’ll leave this earth being well-acquainted with the sounds of dirt beneath my hiking boots and ocean waves breaking on the shore.

I want to live in a way that the 90 year old version of myself would be proud to look back on. And it got me thinking that perhaps we’re going about living the entirely wrong way. We work ourselves into the ground, put off hobbies, and spend our free moments glued to a screen. And for what? So that some day 20 or 30 years from now we can retire and then begin living?

As uncomfortable as it is to admit it, I think I’ve been lying to myself about what really matters. I’ve been zoomed in on the day-to-day and I’ve forgotten about what the bigger picture looks like.

But today I zoom out. I slow down. And I step back.

Since we’re in the thick of summer travel season, and so many of us are trying to get outdoors and capture “the shot,” without having hoards of people in the image, I figured now was as good a time as any to share a few additional thoughts on the matter.

So if you’re planning a trip to a place like the Grand Canyon or Rocky Mountain National Park, where it seems like avoiding people is damn near impossible, keep these little tips in your back pocket to capture a composition that’s captivating enough to make you look twice.

Incorporate a little lens obstruction. Ok, stick with me here. If you’re in a tight space and there’s no way of snapping the photo you’re aiming for without getting other people in the frame, pop something in the corner of your lens to create a natural, yet intentional, blur. This could be a piece of glass, a plastic bag (my go-to), a leaf, a prism, etc. It obscures, but also creates layers in the composition.

Get up higher (or way down low). Is there a rock you can climb on to get above everyone’s head? Or can you squat down and shoot near the ground, so your lens can navigate past people a bit more easily? This technique has the added benefit of changing up the look of your composition to be something genuinely unique, in addition to helping you squeeze past the crowd.

Take bad weather as an opportunity. Here in Colorado, people like to joke that there’s no such thing as bad weather. Just bad clothing. And while I don’t know that I entirely agree with the saying, it does have some merit when it comes to photography. When I see weather that most people would consider less-than-photogenic, I like to test myself and see what I can create. And at least here in the Rocky Mountains, afternoon storms are often followed up by some of the most gorgeous evening light. The best part? The moment the weather turns sour, everyone else leaves the mountains. I just wait the storms out safely in my car (high altitude thunderstorms are no joke), and then pop back out once it’s safe. Barely any people, and I’m able to get the photo I want.

Consider photographing the view when the stars come out. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a sucker for golden hour. But if the place you’re photographing also has minimal (or no) city light coming through, make it a dark sky moment and opt to photograph the view under the stars instead. There are apps for tracking the Milky Way, too, so you can ensure you show up at the right time, at the right angle, to capture the magic.

Put your camera on burst mode. If you’re in a crowded landscape where people are moving around frequently, sometimes the best shot is captured in those quick moments when people are moving from one location to another. Photographing in burst mode allows you to increase the likelihood of getting the image you want, without others in it.

And lastly, don’t shower for a few weeks. If you smell enough, people won’t want to stand next to you. You’ve just cleared the area and made way for your image. I’m kidding. But hey, if you’re feeling desperate and ambitious, go for it.

I’ve realized that I tend to become my favorite version of myself during the summer season, and I think a big part of that is that getting outside almost always shifts my perspective on the way I live my life. And it doesn’t matter how many hiking seasons I experience, there’s always a new takeaway I get from time spent in the great outdoors.

And these are a few of my favorite takeaways I’ve had over the years.

Doing the gritty work is almost always worth it. Some of the best views are at the end of the trail, and they typically require the most work to get to. That last scramble. The false summit. It’s a lesson that applies to so many things in life: the good stuff requires a little bit of grit and elbow grease. When it feels hard, remember that that’s usually the part right before things get good.

We don’t give enough credit to following our instincts. Something about living in the modern world seems to translate to us entirely disregarding our gut feelings. But when we’re out on the trails, something changes. That rustling sound in the woods when you’re hiking before sunrise? You become hyper-aware. The sense that a storm is rolling in while you’re above treeline? You’re on it and making your way down the mountain before it gets close enough to become a problem. Somehow being outdoors is an exercise in re-awakening our instincts, and it’s something I’m trying to incorporate into my everyday life too.

None of this is real. But more specifically, our online lives. We’ve become so accustomed to thinking the digital world is equivalent to the life we lead in the physical world, but it’s simply not. And I’m always reminded of this when I’m out on the trails. The real part is the dirt beneath my hiking boots, the clouds above my head, the smell of the forest I’m trekking through, and the mountain wind whipping by. When I need this reminder, I get outside, and somehow it always manages to put things into perspective.

The adventure is usually better when you bring along a friend. I’ve never been one to solo hike. First, I’m honestly a bit terrified of all the wild animals that are so much more likely to approach you if you’re alone. But I also just genuinely love sharing my outdoors experiences with someone else. What’s strange is how so many of us enjoy hiking with a group, yet we rarely make the effort to spend time with friends in our day-to-day. It’s reserved for special occasions and plans made weeks in advance. But what would happen if we just prioritized time with those we cared about in the same way we prioritize our to-do lists? Imagine how much better life would feel if we made connection the core of it all.

And lastly, helping someone who’s struggling is part of what makes us human. Let’s not forget to do it. Hiking etiquette means allowing those hiking uphill the right of way, because building up momentum after stopping on an incline is anything but pleasant. In the hiking world, kindness is baked in. I think about the fellow hikers who gave us spare bandaids and wipes when our kiddo fell down at the trailhead, because we forgot ours. Or the time my mom and I helped guide a couple of hikers off a mountain during an intense fog when they lost the path and didn’t have an offline map handy.

Somehow the hiking world hasn’t lost its sense of compassion, and I think it has to do with the remote nature of the activity. We, as human beings, are all we’ve got in the great outdoors. We stick together. We help one another. We understand the stakes.

Yet in everyday life, most of us speed past the driver pulled over on the side of the road dealing with a flat tire or a faulty engine. We show road rage toward the person who isn’t moving as quickly as we’d like when they’re simply trying to get home safely, perhaps after a doctor’s appointment that changed their whole world. We rarely give grace or consider that someone could be going through something.

But on the trails? We’ve kept that beautiful aspect of our humanity intact. We’ve stayed in touch with what it means to interact with each other person-to-person. To empathize. To care. And to be there for one another without expecting anything in return. It truly doesn’t get much better than that.

Thankfully, there are still plenty of weeks left in the summer hiking season. More experiences to have. More lessons to learn.

And as you venture out into the great outdoors, take stock of the little teachings you pick up as you make your way up the trail. It’s kind of wild how nature finds a way to put it all into perspective.

Hike on, friends.

Not necessarily their photography niche (portraits, commercial, landscape, etc.), but the particular style of composition and post-production editing. The stuff that makes you look at a frame and just know it was taken by a specific photographer. Like when you see the striking symmetry of the opening scene of a Wes Anderson film and immediately recognize it as his work.

The first few photos you take as a new photographer, inevitably, tend to fall a little flat (and believe it or not, that’s totally normal). They typically feel more like a snapshot than an intentional story. They often focus entirely on the subject and disregard the lighting and the backdrop of the scene. And to add insult to injury, you have no idea what you’re doing with photo editing software and it feels like you’re taking a shot in the dark when pulling any of the sliders in Lightroom or Photoshop.

I know this story well, because I lived it. I’d see a scene that made me feel something, but for whatever reason, the images I took never conveyed the feeling in the way I wanted them to. I couldn’t quite pin it down, but something felt off. Even when the images were properly exposed and had no technical issues, there was a gap between what I’d originally envisioned and what I’d actually photographed.

I was missing my distinct photography style.

As someone who doesn’t do anything half-assed, I basically made it my obsession to figure out what that style was and how I could bring it to life. And this is how I did it.

The imitation phase

When I first got into photography, I spent more hours than I could count scrolling through the work of my favorite artists, hoping that perhaps I could emulate their style or create my own version of it; different enough, but still inspired by it.

I’d study their galleries of work as deeply and as thoroughly as I could: the lighting conditions, the depth of field they chose, the way they edited the tones of the highlights and shadows of the images. I soaked it all up in hopes of learning how they did what they did.

I screenshotted. I saved. I bookmarked. I took notes. At the core of it, I wanted to understand all the ingredients that went into making a captivating photo.

The images I was taking at this point in my journey weren’t ones to share. They were the teaching materials I needed to learn what I liked (and what I didn’t). To take what I loved and leave the rest.

Imitation, if you will, gave me the foundation, but in order to truly develop my own photography style, it couldn’t resemble anyone else’s work. For that, I had to move onto the next phase.

The experimentation phase

This stage was all about getting in my reps. Take the photo, even when you’re not entirely sure you’ll like it. Take the photo in different lighting conditions. Take it from different angles. Take it with different lenses.

And once you’ve taken more photos than you honestly think you want to look at, flip through them in a Lightroom catalog and star the ones that catch your eye.

Rinse. Repeat. And look for the patterns. Are there certain types of photos that you consistently find yourself gravitating towards? This is the stage where you build your core collection of composition types you’ll lean on.

The post-production refinement phase

When it came to editing, I tried my hand at many different post-production styles. At the outset, I tried an ultra-moody edit (very mid-2010’s aesthetic), but realized it didn’t create the vibrancy I so craved in the work that always caught my eye.

From there, I swung in the completely opposite direction, toward a light and airy edit typical of wedding film photography. But as someone who likes a more punchy look, I didn’t love the lack of contrast and depth.

I eventually landed on a style I to this day refer to as “true to life”. It has contrast. It has depth in the shadows. But most importantly, it doesn’t downplay the color that makes real life so compelling. I don’t tone down the hues of the wildflowers. I don’t downplay the blue of the water. I want it all.

The “bring it together” phase

Once you have your core composition styles and your editing style, you have the foundation you need to actually put your distinct photography style into action.

Save your editing choices as a preset you can re-use in Lightroom, which’ll help speed up the post-production process and keep things consistent. If you photograph in different lighting conditions often, it may make sense to have presets saved for each of those lighting types (e.g. a preset for direct sun and one for blue hour).

Keep a reference gallery on your phone of some of your favorite images you’ve taken so you can look back on them when you feel stuck during a shoot. At the beginning of your photo journey, those reminders of your favorite compositions can be extremely helpful.

The iteration phase

The cool thing about photography styles is that they can (and sometimes should) change. Each photo is your perspective and take on the world, and as people, we’re dynamic. Why wouldn’t our photos be as well?

The first few years of my photography career, I pivoted my photography style a couple of times before I landed on something that felt like the one. But even with my existing style, I find myself getting the itch to switch things up and try something new. I’m not the same person I was five years ago, and there’s no reason my photos should stay frozen in a style that defined me at a point in the past.

One of the most incredible aspects of photography as an art form is the way two different people could take the same piece of equipment, photograph the same scene, and come away with two completely different images. There’s magic in that.

A final note. As you iterate and work through finding your distinct photography style, remember this: your style is a reflection of how you see the world around you. It’s your unique take on that mountain vista or that alpine lake or the way those waves crash against the shore. It’s not going to look like anyone else’s and that’s the point. Embrace that. It’s what gives meaning to the craft in the first place.

Why bother with only being able to print a finite number of images, when I could take thousands and store them digitally, each frame seemingly always available with a few taps of the trackpad on my computer.

It wasn’t until 2020, stuck inside with endless time on my hands, that I decided to print out a collection of 25 4x6 prints of our mountain adventures over the years. Little did I know, as that little brown box arrived at the door of our apartment, that I’d opened up the floodgates to a whole new outlook on photography.

I don’t quite know how to explain it, but there was something about holding that thick cardstock paper in my hands that felt permanent. The vibrancy of the ink beautifully told the story of the alpine landscapes we’d visited on our travels. The texture of the paper gave it a dimensionality no screen could replicate. The fact that I could hold it in my hand made the adventures themselves feel real, rather than some vague, distant memory stored on a hard drive tucked away in my office.

And while I had thousands of additional images that I’d taken from these travels, the only place those other images lived was on a hard drive. To relive those memories required pulling out the glowing screen and digging through folders and files. Inconvenient and undeniably less experiential than holding the prints themselves in my hands.

I often think back on the times I’ve gone to my parents’ house and they have collection upon collection of photo albums. Black and white images dating back nearly a hundred years ago paired with more modern images of my 90’s childhood, gaudy fashion choices and all.

There’s a nostalgia and joy I feel when I flip through those pages, listening to the crinkling of the plastic sleeves holding years of my life within them.

We live in an age where the only place some people store their photos is on their social media accounts. And it’s honestly heartbreaking hearing stories of people who’ve lost the documentation of entire years of their lives when their accounts were removed by the powers that be.

Imagine galleries of your most important moments: graduations, weddings, babies. All pulled from the digital realm without a trace and no way to recover them.

We tend to act like images stored online are somehow more safe than their print counterparts. That solely having a printed copy of something is somehow inferior. And don’t get me wrong, print inherently has its downsides. But why is it that we also seem to forget that hard drives fail and that SD cards can corrupt? Technology is by no means bulletproof. And didn’t we, for thousands of years, archive our art in a non-digital format?

I tend to think we’ve lost the plot when it comes to modern-day photography. Part of it, I’d imagine, is due to the rise in digital cameras. Film had an inherently finite nature that encouraged curation, and digital encourages the opposite.

But we’ve also just accepted and adopted this norm of storing the most important elements of our lives online. It’s honestly a little wild when you think about it. The digital world doesn’t even really exist, yet we treat it like it’s somehow superior to the physical world that surrounds us.

And that applies whether we’re talking about photography or really anything else. How many of us can honestly say we could get through an entire week, month, or year of our lives without access to the digital world, when it feels like being a functioning member of society basically mandates it?

Here’s the thing: none of us are likely going to completely decouple ourselves from the digital age we live in. It’s all too baked in. But when it comes to our moments of joy and remembrance—our memories—perhaps we can take a step back and reconsider how we choose to showcase them.

When my kids look at the walls of our home, they see themselves reflected in matted frames. When they grab the book off the coffee table in the living room, it’s photographs of themselves they’ll stumble upon. Their milestones and moments. The scenes I want us to be able to look at without needing a charged up laptop or a login.

As I watch my eldest narrate the stories of their lives to my youngest while flipping through a photo album from the past year, I can’t help but feel a sense of “rightness”. This is how it should be; our memories quite literally within arm’s reach, adorning the walls and shelves of our home.

We’ve lost the sense of what it feels like to see ourselves, our past, and our growth documented down hallways, collected along stairwells, and tucked into reading nooks. We swapped it out for generic, minimalist art and the belief that our memories are better off stored in some random cloud run by Amazon, at the whim of technology that is by no means infallible.

I don’t know about you, but the digitalization of everything is something I’ve become wary of. I’ve come to prefer holding a physical book and smelling its pages over reading it on a device. I love the texture of matte photograph paper, its thick cardstock creating weight in my hands (as it should, given the precious snapshots of life it holds).

But beyond that, there’s also beauty in the curation that comes with knowing you can only choose a select number of photographs to display on your walls. It makes the images that do make the cut that much more impactful. If you ask me, a gallery wall of 5 photographs beats a digital album of 5,000 any day. One tells a story. The other feels like chaos.

I suppose this is all just a long-winded way of saying one thing: print your damn images. Curate the gallery wall. Craft the photo album. Do it the analog way. Because there’s nothing quite like holding a memory in your hands. I’m sorry to say, but your phone just can’t compete with that.

They come for the sense of how small we all are in the grand scheme of things, because the mountains consistently seem to have a way of putting everything into perspective.

But for me, I find that there’s a different composition that catches my eye. Because as much as I adore the sheer scale, jagged edges, and sweeping valleys of the mountain landscapes throughout Colorado, there’s something else that I never quite tire of.

And that’s what I find when I point my camera lens down, to the ground.

Call me strange (hey, I’ll take it), but when I get up in the mountains, I often find myself intentionally focusing on what’s beneath my feet.

I love studying the way the tree roots meander across the hiking trail, creating a gorgeously organic tangle of threads; a pattern that only nature can execute with such captivating beauty.

I can’t help but get stuck on the way river water glistens just so when a pocket of direct sun hits it. Even better when it lights up the pebbles just beneath the surface.

I could find myself studying the wildflowers that dot the alpine meadows for hours on end, watching as the unpredictable mountain winds whip past them with fury.

These little snippets, these little pockets of alpine life? In so many respects, they tell the story of the mountains better than anything else. Because after all, what are the mountains if not a painting where each brushstroke is composed of the often unnoticed singular rocks, trees, flowers, and specks of dirt that make up the whole picture?

When I used to photograph weddings, we’d portion off a part of the day for what we referred to as “detail photos”. Couples would gather together a box of their important trinkets and elements of the day, and I’d take 30 or so minutes out of the timeline to document these things.

The perfume. The rings. The lace details of the handkerchief. The wax seal and ribbon on the invitation suite. The texture on the pages of the vow books where the handwritten words had been painstakingly scribbled and rethought and scribbled again.

Often, these were the first images you’d see in the gallery, and they’d set the stage for the feeling of the entire event. Before a single image of a person showed up, you’d seen these elements that defined the essence and the vibe of the day itself.

My wedding photography days are long gone, but now I find myself taking “detail photos” of landscapes I love.

And if I’m being completely honest, they happen to be some of my favorite images. Because much like wedding details, they create the feeling and set the stage for the larger picture.

If you’re getting into landscape photography, you probably spend a good bit of your time looking for those wide, expansive vistas. Those grand 360 degree views that practically beg you to pull the car onto the side of the road and collect your wide angle lens.

And by all means, take that photo. But, if I could just make one tiny suggestion?

Before you hop back in the car and keep driving down that mountain road, consider looking down at the ground underneath your feet. Perhaps you’ll find the composition that completes the whole story. That makes your collection of images truly feel whole. The final brushstroke to complete the painting.

It’s a collection of images that to this day, even after having resided in their spot for years now, I find myself wandering off to.

The strange thing: the photos themselves are ones I snapped during what could only be described as an utterly mundane day: a trip to the farmer’s market, where I picked up the tiniest vase of blooms from a local flower farmer.

But the way I chose to photograph the flowers, the way I zoomed in and played with texture, with light, with movement? That’s the thing that made me want these particular images fixed to the wall, where I could look at them every day.

And they’ve held my attention ever since.

I’ve noticed that when some beginners are getting into photography, they’ll hesitate to take the photo until they’ve found something that feels “worth photographing.” Whether it’s a breathtaking alpine vista or a moment where the light hits just right, there’s a tendency to wait it out.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in being intentional about what you photograph. But what if some of the most interesting compositions you could take were ones that required a little bit of creativity to make something ordinary feel anything but?

There’s something distinctly satisfying about taking a subject people expect to be depicted one way, and showcase it an entirely different way. For me, for these images, it meant highlighting the fuzzy texture on the flower stem on the image in the top left, because who ever notices that, but isn’t it whimsical?

It meant opting for a black and white edit to draw out the curves and textures and shadows of the scene.

It meant placing a plastic bag in front of my lens to create a sense of movement in the photo at the bottom left, to really symbolize the fleeting nature of the blooms. Here one day, wilting the next.

It meant obstructing my lens in the bottom right image to create a sense of stumbling upon a hidden scene. Something you’re almost not even sure you’re supposed to be looking at.

I could have focused on the bright, whimsical colors of the flowers. I could have ensured the entire bouquet was in frame. I could have made everything tack sharp, with no blur. But that’s exactly what you’d expect.

And I don’t know. I tend to think the most interesting photos are the ones that take the ordinary and showcase it in a way that’s utterly different from anything else out there.

All of this to say, it’s rarely what we photograph that moves people. It’s how we photograph it. The mundane moments can often be the most intriguing, because they take the every day and bring meaning and intrigue to it. They provide us with a fresh perspective that makes us appreciate the small things.

If you ask me, that may just be the superpower of photography.

P.S., There’ll be no dispatch next week. I’m taking next weekend off, and getting outside with the fam. See y’all in July!

And while many of these new technologies were disruptive in nature (and certainly had their drawbacks), it’s hard to deny that we’re better off because of them.

In today’s world, we’re being fed a similar narrative about AI. That it’s our version of the industrial revolution; a pivotal moment that’ll shake things up, but provide benefits that far exceed the pitfalls. Use AI or get left behind, they tell us.

But what the AI overlords are either conveniently forgetting or are blissfully unaware of is that a frictionless world isn’t one in which humans thrive. And in fact, it’s much closer to dystopia than utopia.

In the hiking world, we like to joke about type 2 fun. It’s basically an activity that honestly feels somewhat miserable in the moment. But when it’s done, you feel a real sense of accomplishment, and a strange craving to do it all over again. Like that insanely long and steep trek up a mountainside before dawn that makes you question all your life decisions. But man, you’ll tell that story for years to come.

What AI somehow manages to do is take type 2 fun and grind it to a pulp. In the moment it might feel satisfying to get the quick answer without the research deep-dive. Or to have the thoughts you’ve had bouncing around in your head artfully composed on a page for you, spell-checked and all.

But when we take the hard part out of the task, we remove what makes us distinctly human in the first place.

The trial and error.

The writing and erasing.

The testing and reworking.

The messy, unglamorous, deliciously complicated middle. The one that we simultaneously wish would pass by quickly and that we also want to somehow constantly be present in.

I’m sure we’ve all had a parent or someone older than us tell the story of how they had to “walk up hill both ways” to school. And we smirked a little bit at the idea that there was such a sense of pride in how much harder things used to be. After all, what’s wrong with technology making our lives just a little bit easier?

But perhaps they were onto something. When I look back, the things I’m most proud of in life are the things that required me to go to uncomfortable places and do the gritty, messy work.

The moments that I reflect back on as being the most pivotal are in many respects ones I fought tooth and nail to avoid doing, because the friction made the task feel insurmountable. But I’m all the better for pushing myself to do it anyway.

It may seem like a beneficial trade to hand off the discomfort of putting in the work to AI. And in the short run, it may actually feel like you’re helping yourself. But I fear we’re forgetting to ask ourselves what happens when we stop working those muscles we used to exercise daily before AI took the task off of our plates.

It’s honestly sobering to think we’re entering an era of humanity where someone outsources the task of writing a eulogy for their parent to AI. We’re talking about the grief-fueled art of summing up the life of another human and what they meant to you, and we just want to hand that over to a bot to craft the message? To embody the emotion? I just have a hard time stomaching it.

What happens when we stop trying to put our thoughts and emotions and experiences into words crafted directly from our own hearts? Do we lose part of what it means to emote in the first place?

That type of friction, the one that makes our words and our photos and our art as beautiful as it is, is undeniably paramount to who we are as people. Dare I say we’re doing ourselves a disservice by allowing it to become AI slop?

Here’s the thing: I’m not here to judge every time you use AI. I get it, we live in a world that’s basically shoving it down our throats, and it’s increasingly difficult to completely opt out.

But I just hope we don’t forget that oftentimes something being challenging is kind of the whole point. It’s life’s challenges that build resilience, build character, build empathy, build experience, and build connection. What a damn shame to lose that. Are we genuinely willing to let AI take it from us?

There’s a route connecting the tiny mountain towns of Silverton and Telluride, Colorado. It’s a dirt road that winds all the way up into the high alpine, where trees cannot survive, and the path is paved with layer upon layer of exposed rock.

It’s a route where snow lingers 10 feet high on the sides of the road, even into July. A road where the path is a single lane, nestled into the side of the mountain with a sharp cliffside descending below.

It’s not a road for the faint of heart, and every time I’ve been on it, it’s made my pulse race and my hands sweat. But my goodness, the views you’re rewarded with are unlike anything else. Sweeping mountain vistas with otherworldly scenes of the San Juan Mountains. Layers of red earth paired with green tundra plant life paired with remnants of snow from the harsh winters that take over the high country for much of the year.

It feels truly surreal. Almost like you’ve stumbled upon a place you aren’t supposed to see.

And the reality is, most people traveling between these two mountain towns don’t see it. They take the paved road. The one with maintained pull-offs, tourist signage, and places for a pit stop.

Don’t get me wrong. I actually love the paved road. In fact, it’s what I take most of the time when traveling between Silverton and Telluride.

But nothing quite compares to the dirt path and its rare air. The sense that you’re doing something that so few people are willing to put up with. An inconvenience in their eyes. As for me, the inconvenience is the point of it all.

I’ve always been of the mindset that the most rewarding things in life are the ones you have to struggle for. The ones that required some elbow grease, some ups and downs, bumps in the road (literally), and a little bit of “oh my god, why am I doing this?”.

In the moment, you’re questioning everything, but you know, somewhere deep down, that the effort and the grit will make the outcome all the more worth it.

As human beings, I think it’s in our nature to appreciate earning something over simply having it handed to you. We often think that a solution presented to us on a platter is what we want, but I tend to believe there’s some primitive, instinctual aspect of our brains that craves and respects the outcome of something we’ve built and worked for.

And that’s what taking the dirt road is for me. It’s rarely the most efficient route. It’s certainly not the easiest to navigate. But the feeling of post-drive euphoria after what’s undeniably a hair-raising adventure? It’s hard to beat.

At this moment in my life, I feel like I’ve taken more metaphorical “dirt roads” than I think I can handle. In the moment, it feels undeniably overwhelming. But I have a sense that when it’s all said and done, I’ll thank myself for the exertion, and the ability to push myself to the boundaries of what I thought I was capable of. To truly get my tires muddy, so to speak.

Whether it’s literal or figurative, perhaps it’s worth considering forgetting about efficiency and exiting the paved path. To tackle the road that mandates you slow down to a measly 10 miles per hour, inching your way along a one-way bumpy trail hugging the side of a mountain. The road that, for a brief moment there, made you question your sanity. The road whose views feel like a glimpse into the storyline of a well-kept secret.

Google Maps surely wouldn’t recommend it, but isn’t that the point?

They rarely want anyone to see that they may have been standing on an overpass, pulled off on the side of a mountain pass, or mere feet from a parking lot.

Me, on the other hand? I have an entirely different take on the matter.

The landscape images that have always tugged at my heartstrings are the ones with a winding road meandering through the scene. They always stop me in my tracks, pull me in, and leave me studying the details of the image long after the first glance.

But what is it about a road in the middle of a landscape that makes it so compelling? It quite literally cuts through nature, delineating the mark between the wild and the maintained. In theory, it should be a thing to avoid.

Yet I can’t shake the feeling these types of photos leave me with. And here’s why.

The road provides a sense of scale. The reality is, showing scale in a mountain landscape (or really any landscape for that matter) can be a difficult endeavor. You don’t always have a person or animal as a subject to really give you that frame of reference. The road steps in and creates it.

The road becomes a leading line. We use leading lines in photography just like painters, designers, and other visual storytellers do. The whole point is, as the name implies, for the line to lead your eye to the subject of the image. And honestly, what could be cooler than a twisting and turning mountain road leading your eye right to the base of a towering mountain?

The road makes the image dynamic. Think about sports photography and the way the athlete in the photo bring a sense of movement to the image. Most landscape photographers don’t consider movement as a part of the equation, but the same dynamic nature that applies to sports photography can also translate to landscape photos. Suddenly, the blurred body of a car meandering down a coastal highway that sits along a cliffside becomes the thing that makes the cliffside itself feel so grand.

The road symbolizes a sense of adventure. There’s nothing quite like the wide open road stretched out ahead of you on a journey through the mountains. And photographs that incorporate that scene, almost as if the image was taken from the dash of the car, are such a beautiful way to take you back to that feeling.

The road represents the reality of the scene. Sure, sometimes we want to snap photos in such a way that they make a seemingly ordinary scene look and feel extraordinary. But sometimes the documentation of the moment itself, the way it actually is, is the whole point. The road was there. It was a part of the journey. Why not include it in the image itself?

So the next time you’re hauling your car up a mountain road, consider how the scene you want to photograph would be better served by capturing the road that runs between the peaks.

If you ask me, there’s nothing quite as delicious as a dreamy, outstretched road meandering through the alpine. It’s always going to be the vantage point I seek out.

From what I’ve seen, it’s difficult to find someone who genuinely wants this data center built (save for the billionaire pushing the whole thing and the politicians who are happy to sell out the people of Utah).

As someone who’s very open about their love for the outdoors, I felt a need to use my voice to say something. Little did I know, my thoughts would end up going viral. And as often happens on the internet, some less-than-friendly individual felt compelled to chew me out for it and tell me that if I really cared about the impact of AI, I’d stop posting on social media for the sake of engagement and live an entirely offline existence.

It’s a storyline so many of us have heard before. This idea that if we were true environmentalists, we’d just opt out of the entire damn system. Wander off into the woods and live off the land. Forget the phones. Forget the computers. Forget AI.

Don’t get me wrong, in many ways it does sound like a dream (hell, I wrote on the topic a few months back). But the reality is, we live within the bounds of a tech-centered society. Most of us don’t have the luxury of walking away when we’re frustrated with the way things work.

I don’t know about you, but if I just turned off my phone and never opened my computer again, I’m pretty sure I’d be out of a job.

That said, that person’s comment, while honestly a bit unhinged, got me thinking: even if we can’t entirely disconnect, what little steps can we take to reduce our dependency on tech in an era that practically demands it by default?

These are the things that I’ve tried, as well as some things I’m planning to include in my routine going forward. Because some change is better than no change. And making a difference by altering our behavior doesn’t have to be so black and white.

Intentionally leaving my phone in another room. During work hours, my phone has to be close by. But afterwards? It can sit in another room. If there’s something important, the people in my life know they can call, and I’ll walk over and pick up. Texts, socials, and the rest? That can wait. I’ll be honest, the other week, I was talking with my husband about getting a landline and a traditional analog alarm clock so that we could keep the cell phones solely for work hours.

Gamifying time spent offline. I love competing with myself, and there’s something so satisfying about seeing if today’s the day I can spend less hours on my phone than the previous day. I also really enjoy comparing the average time spent on my phone week after week to see how low I can drive that number. I read somewhere recently that kids nowadays are spending an average of 7 hours a day on their phones and that horrified me. The last thing I want to do is to spend my entire workday in front of my computer screen only to squander the equivalent of another workday in front of my phone.

Limiting AI use to work hours. Many of us have jobs that require us to use AI. It’s not as simple as saying no (unless we’re interested in losing said jobs). But outside of work? That’s a whole different story. What I write here and the photos I take are mine. No AI is involved in the ideation or the creation or the editing. That’s a line I refuse to cross.

Finding an analog craft or hobby. This is something that’s been on my mind a lot lately. For my husband, this is gardening. For me, I’ve been itching to get into pottery and ceramics. I also recently got back into painting, and that’s been such a refreshing change of pace.

Turning off social media notifications. No one needs to be endlessly pinged by an app. I’m one of those people who can’t stand seeing that I have an unread message waiting for me, and getting a push notification just adds to that stress. So I disable them, which makes it easier to only pop in on social media during certain times of day, without having it eat into every moment.

Getting a record player. This has been on my list for a while now. I love the imperfect sound of vinyl, and would ideally like to get off apps like Spotify altogether (seriously, the constant need to have a subscription to every service is getting out of control). I’m a creature of habit and tend to listen to the same artists over and over again, so the need to have access to millions of songs isn’t a huge pull for me.

Choosing physical books over ebooks. Don’t get me wrong, I get the appeal of the Kindle, but I’m not interested in putting more money into Jeff Bezos’ pocket. If Amazon’s taking a cut of every licensed book, I’ll opt out. Plus, let’s be real, nothing beats the smell of a freshly printed book, and the feeling of physically flipping through the pages.

Hanging on to my tech as long as possible. I don’t need to line billionaire pockets by grabbing an updated computer or phone right when it comes out. I’d rather keep what I have until it’s no longer usable. And when it can be fixed, I’d rather fix it.

It’s the little things

At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s realistic for the average person to entirely disconnect from the online world. Whether we like it or not, we’re intertwined with it. And while it sounds nice to make signing off our ultimate form of rebellion, it’s rarely ever that simple.

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that big impact often comes from small changes compounded over time. To imply that walking away from online life is the only solution is not only narrow-minded, but frankly unachievable for most of us.

But itty bitty steps? Little shifts in our patterns? Modifications to where we choose to spend our time and money, without entirely overhauling our way of life? Those things make more of a difference than we give them credit for.

So here’s to a semi-offline life. May it be filled with time spent having conversations in person, eating brunch without feeling like you have to photograph it, and going for an evening walk instead of doomscrolling for an hour (because let’s be honest, 15 minutes is enough of that).

I vividly remember the joy in childhood of exploring the world with my hands and feet. The texture of squishy, goopy sand on a lakeshore on a hot summer’s day. The grainy, hard texture of a sun-worn sidewalk in the neighborhood during peak August. The feeling of cool, moist Georgia red clay between my fingers on a rainy spring afternoon.

Those feelings, those interactions, with the earth have had an undeniable impact on my life and my work as a creative professional. I’m always chasing that feeling and that texture through my images.

But at some point, I traded time in the dirt for time at a desk. And even when I do get outside, I have my hiking boots on. It’s rare that I take a moment to put my feet directly on the ground. So rare, in fact, that I can’t even remember the last time I actually did it.

There’s a thing called earthing

There’s been quite a bit of discussion recently about the concept of “earthing”. And it’s pretty much what it sounds like: getting into direct contact with the earth. “Touching grass,” if you will. Having your body physically connected to the ground.

Some societies have claimed, for generations, that earthing comes with healing benefits. The science, at this point, isn’t really strong enough to draw effective conclusions. Small sample sizes. Anecdotal evidence. Data interpreted to fit a narrative, rather than a narrative derived from an unbiased look at the data.

But regardless, in a world that tries to optimize every little thing, I think we’re missing the point entirely.

Sure, it’s nice if getting connected with the earth helps our health, but beyond that, do we really want to live a life where we’re entirely disconnected from the ground that grows the food we eat and the waters that give us life?

We’ve made incredible technological advancements as human beings, but I fear some of it has been to our detriment. We’ve never been more disconnected from the earth we live on, and we’re seeing the impacts every day.

Whether it’s in our health or in our disregard for public lands (throw a stone and you’ll find a member of Congress willing to give up our public lands for mining efforts), we’ve basically turned our backs on the planet.

But what happens when we’ve lost touch with our planet to such a degree that our planet can no longer sustain us? What happens when we stay disconnected from the earth for too long?

Here’s the thing: we’re not going to solve the world’s problems in a day. But let’s not forget this: these problems are solvable. Maybe it just starts with getting your hands in the dirt; where they’ve always belonged.

Because shouldn’t a grueling trek up a mountain trail before sunrise be rewarded with watching the alpenglow with your feet dipped in a chilly alpine lake? Shouldn’t the feeling of our bare feet on grass be just as familiar to us than the feeling of the soles of our shoes?

We weren’t meant to live apart from the elements. We were meant to interact with them. That’s what makes us human.

But as someone who’s been taking photos professionally for nearly a decade (and who’s been no stranger to the camera well before that), I also know that there’s a point at which the “better” gear actually does make sense.

And that’s what I’m hoping to get to the heart of here. But before I do, a bit of transparency:

I’d like to think I’m the opposite of a gear junkie. I haven’t upgraded my camera bodies in about eight years, and frankly, I don’t plan on doing so anytime soon (even when my shutters break, I’ll probably just replace them).

Sure, lighter weight mirrorless camera bodies are everywhere now, but my DSLRs are my workhorses. And the reality is most people would never be able to tell the difference.

Early in my photography career, I used to think it was a disservice to your clients to not regularly upgrade your gear, but when it comes to professional-grade camera equipment, the differences are often rarely worth the investment, at least when a new piece of gear first comes out (and when it’s inevitably at its most expensive).

So in what scenarios is it actually worth upgrading your camera gear? I’ll give a few examples of times I personally knew it was the right choice.

You plan on photographing in low-light conditions. Whether it’s astrophotography or documenting events in rooms with moody lighting (where flash would totally ruin the vibe), a camera that can handle high ISO without introducing too much noise is key. Similarly, this is a good time to choose a full frame camera over one with a crop sensor.

You want a camera that can accommodate more images in burst mode. If you’re photographing events with a lot of movement (think sports photography or weddings), a camera that can manage a solid number of frames per second will be key. This will keep you from missing moments in between shots.

You plan on using your images for large-scale prints. An image on the phone is all well and good until you plan on printing it and hanging it up on a wall. If you’re printing a large image, higher megapixels will be an important factor.

You’re documenting moments that don’t have a do-over. Professional-grade cameras will often have dual slots, so you’re writing your images to two cards. Most intro cameras only write to one card, so if that card breaks or corrupts, you’ve lost the images. For events, cameras with dual slots is crucial. They give you a back-up when you don’t have a chance to re-photograph a moment.

The takeaway

You’ll notice that most of those scenarios are typically situations where you’re photographing in some sort of professional capacity. If you’re just taking photos as a hobby, the additional bells and whistles aren’t typically necessary.

That said, if you do decide to upgrade your gear, one little pro tip is waiting until the next generation of a camera body or lens comes out, since you’ll be able to get the older generation version for a good bit less.

My two cents: If you’re a beginner looking to upgrade just one piece of gear, the most sensible move is to go from a camera body with a crop sensor to a full frame sensor. This opens up the types of lenses you’re able to use for your images, and that’s often where you see the difference between a professional image and an amateur one.

The professional lenses that go with full frame cameras allow for that ultra shallow depth of field that gives you that soft, blurry background (bokeh). Yes, your phone can imitate that look, but it’s usually pretty obvious that it’s an imitation.

The myth of the camera making or breaking a photo

I’ve been in the photography industry long enough to know that the most talented photographers can make you feel something with whatever gear they have in their hand. Imperfect gear isn’t holding you back. It’s actually pushing you to be better at your craft.

I’ll leave you with this. There was a point in time when ditching film cameras and upgrading to digital was the expectation for professional photographers. But look at us now.

Nearly every film photographer I know charges a premium for work taken on film, and it’s not solely because of the cost of the film itself and getting it developed. There’s something nostalgic about the quality and the value of a photo taken with a technology from a bygone era.

We’re also seeing the rise of the Polaroid camera and even disposable cameras, simply because of the nostalgia of it all. In these cases, it’s rarely about the technical quality of the image. It’s almost always about the emotion of the medium and the creativity of the lighting and composition of the image captured. And all of that is possible with the most rudimentary of cameras.

So don’t allow anyone to make you feel less than for not having the latest or greatest. The magic of photography doesn’t care about your camera specs. It cares about the heart you bring to the table. A crappy photo is a crappy photo, regardless of the camera used to take it. And in the same vein, an image that pulls at the heartstrings and tells a story doesn’t lean on specs to do so.

I grew up doing gymnastics, where routines would wrap in a minute and a half or less. Sure, you’re doing high intensity work, but it was always short-lived, and inevitably your legs or arms would wear down faster than anything else.

No matter how strong I was, if you asked me to run a mile, I couldn’t do it without stopping several times throughout to walk, and it had always been something that bugged me.

Meanwhile, my husband was a cross-country runner, well-versed in 20 mile long runs any old day of the week. So I asked him to train me; get me to run that mile without huffing and puffing.

And when we first started training, my goodness, I was incredibly bad at it. There were points where my throat felt metallic, and I was convinced my heart rate would never regulate.

A few weeks in, I all but gave up on the task and didn’t return to running until nearly a decade later, when I had my first kiddo and weirdly got the itch to try it again.

Just like before, I was still a terrible runner. I was lucky if I could run for a full minute, let alone finish a mile. But something about becoming a mom humbles you, and you realize that it’s totally okay to suck at something again and again and again, until finally you figure it out.

Ten years before, if I wasn’t good at something after a few attempts, I’d assume it just wasn’t in the cards for me. That I wasn’t the “running type.” But now, I figured that maybe, just maybe, I could stick with the task and live with the discomfort of being no good at it. Perhaps I’d reach a tipping point when all of a sudden the thing actually felt possible.

So I worked my way up from one minute to five. And from five to fifteen. And from fifteen to half an hour. No stopping. Always jogging, even if it was at a snail’s pace.

Eventually, I got up one morning and just decided I was going to run 5 kilometers. To my surprise, I actually did it. Was my time embarrassingly long? Yeah, it was. But still, I did it. No breaks. One foot in front of the other.

That was 3 years ago, and I haven’t grown tired of running yet. It doesn’t quite matter to me that I’m not speedy. My personal records are compared against me, myself, and I. No one else.

I don’t expect to win a race or outpace my husband. But what I can tell you is that the other day, I was able to run for an hour straight, without a single break, which is something I couldn’t have ever imagined for myself just 10 years ago.

Running is now my break. It’s my release from reality. It’s one of my favorite parts of the day. The thing I once hated is the thing I now crave, and I can’t really imagine my life without it.

And the only reason I got to this point was because I made a decision to be openly, visibly bad at the thing I wanted. To sit in the discomfort. To feel what it was like to struggle and take two steps back, with only one step forward.

Until eventually I did hit that tipping point. That point where it was no longer my lungs or heart giving out during a run, but my legs simply deciding they were done. And as someone who has always excelled in strength over endurance, it was a strange feeling.

I don’t know what it is that you’ve dreamed of doing; what you’ve tried a few times but have ultimately put back on the shelf and assumed it wasn’t in the cards for you.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that success rewards the gritty. The determined. The relentless. It’s rarely about talent. It’s almost always about your willingness to be bad at something until somehow you’re actually good at it.

So don’t sell yourself short. Suck at the thing. Suck so proudly at it until one day you realize may not suck at all.

As a kid, my favorite memories included the endless sounds of screaming cicadas singing their song as I fell asleep. The feeling of the wind racing past my chlorine-soaked hair as I rode my bike back home from the neighborhood pool. The way the long, sunlight-filled days seemed to drag on endlessly, but in the best way.

You could say I never really grew up, because to this day, I still feel myself come alive in the summertime. The magic never disappeared.

But unlike childhood, where it felt like summer lasted a lifetime and everything was possible, I now realize the finite nature of the season. Lately, it feels like the warm, golden glow of the season comes and goes in an instant. And having a summer bucket list has been my way of ensuring I don’t let the time pass me by without squeezing in all the adventures I’ve been dreaming of during the colder months.

This is what I have on my summer bucket list. And if you’re planning your own, take what you want, and leave the rest. Warmer days are upon us.

I want to get back into swimming. Childhood summers were basically defined by early mornings at swim team practice. I remember marking summer milestones by the dates of big swim meets. But as an adult, I can’t really remember the last time I went to the pool to actually swim and not just hang out in a lounge chair on the patio. Frankly, I miss the way swimming laps put me in a contemplative zone, the world quieted under the surface of the water, alone with my thoughts and the pounding of my heart as I made my way down the lane. In a day and age when everything is constantly competing for our attention, maybe the silence of a good swim is really all we need?

I want to incorporate a regular practice of reading a good book in the summer sun. I’ve always been the kind of person who loves practical books, and I tend to stay away from fiction. But lately I’ve been craving something with a storyline. Summer feels like the perfect excuse to pop open the patio chairs and enjoy the perfect weather with a good read.

I want to plan a family camping trip at one of our favorite lake spots in Colorado. Our kids are at the age where I genuinely think they’ll enjoy the camping experience and may actually create some core memories. A few nights sleeping, eating, and playing beneath the wide-open Colorado sky is exactly what I want for them.

I want to incorporate a quick “morning mile” into my weekly routine. Right now, I make room for what I call my 5K lunch break, and it’s such a highlight. But with the weather heating up, knocking out my run during those delightful morning hours is going to be the move. And I’m just putting this out there (gotta hold myself accountable), but I’d like to run a 10K by the end of summer as well. Endurance is definitely not my strong suit, but I figure why not give it a try? It’s fun to be bad at stuff, after all.

I want to get the family out to Moab at the very tail end of summer. It’s been a few years since we’ve driven across the border of Colorado to our favorite little desert town, and I miss it dearly. It’s a place our kids have never been, and I just know they’ll love seeing the endless canyons and sandstone arches.

I want to get my kiddos out on the trails more often. My little ones love hiking, but the reality is the drive to some of our favorite trailheads is a long one, and often involves a good bit of mountain traffic. As a family, we tend to talk ourselves out of it more often than I’d like. This summer, I don’t want to do that. The kids always thrive when they’re on the trails. We just have to find a way to make the drive to the hiking trail an adventure in and of itself.

I also just had to ask my toddlers if they had anything they wanted to accomplish this summer, and I got just about the best answer you can get: no, we’re not doing anything. Honestly? They make a good point. I think we could all benefit from some time in the summer where we just don’t do anything. Boredom in itself is magic.

Honestly, when I look at my summer bucket list, I can’t help but feel like it’s giving 90’s summer vibes, and that’s really all I want. More time outside, living in three dimensions, and away from technology. I think we’re all living in this age where we’re exhausted with the same old. We’re overworked, overtired, and overstimulated. Maybe it’s time to get back to the basics.

So here’s to a 90’s summer. Because if we’re being honest, it was the most iconic decade.

I’ve watched as everyone, from everyday people to brands, use AI to generate images. And at first it all seemed pretty harmless. People generating fun, artsy images of themselves. Outputs that showed people with two fingers on each hand, obviously generative and not a real photo of a real person. Eyes that felt utterly soulless. There was always some sort of tell.

But as someone who has a background in tech, I knew how quickly this technology could develop. And I knew it was only a matter of time before telling an AI image from a real one would become harder.

We’ve now entered an age of AI where it takes more discernment to identify AI imagery from reality, and it’s impacting everything from the media we consume to the product imagery we see. Take, for example, when my favorite interior designer used an AI generated image to try and sell her new product line (needless to say, I was bummed out to see that).

I won’t debate the ethics of it all right now. Goodness knows, I have my issues with the unsustainable water usage and complete lack of regulation of the tech industry. But that’s a story for another day.

I want to zoom in on the impact AI has on the world I live and breathe: photography. An art whose focus is on documentation, storytelling, and evoking emotion.

But before I can really dive into this, where do these AI generated images actually come from?

How the heck is AI art even made?

Generative AI functions off of enormous datasets. And many of these datasets essentially slurp up all of the internet. Unfortunately, this primarily includes copyrighted works. Copyrighted writing. Copyrighted graphics. Copyrighted images.

You can ask AI to generate an image in the same style as a favorite artist of yours, and it can do that, solely because it has slurped up that art in its dataset. If it’s on the web, AI has likely grabbed it. This is despite the fact that the artist never originally consented to their copyrighted work being licensed in such a way.

Sure, sites are now able to opt out of AI using their work in a dataset, but that option came after these first, foundational datasets were created.

Then there’s the impact of artists within companies. Artists whose work made these companies what they are today are being laid off because said companies are using AI to create the art going forward. Sure, those artists didn’t own copyright of the work they created for those companies, but the impact is no less disappointing.

The human touch

To the tech crowd, the humanity of it all is a problem to be solved. A constraint to be overcome. Inefficiencies to be eliminated.

What they don’t understand is the humanity is actually the point. The creative process has friction, which spurs sustainable innovation. The trial-and-error process is critical for creators to understand why certain things work or don’t; why rules exist, and when they can intentionally be broken. Understanding the why is as important as understanding the what.

Building that knowledge takes time, practice, and effort. Experiencing art with that understanding is part of what makes beautiful artistic output so impressive.

On the consumer side, AI can create a cheap (in experiential terms) representation of something that never happened. Looking at someone else’s wedding or vacation photos is never as meaningful as looking at your own, because you didn’t experience it. It’s the bringing-you-back-to-the-moment that has the value.

AI generated photos of an experience you never had will be even less meaningful than looking at someone else’s photos.

And even when it’s not a photo of your own lived experience, there’s something so uniquely human about understanding what someone was feeling in a moment through the images or the art they’ve created. It’s what allows us to connect to an image on a deeper level.

Everything is starting to look the same

What happens when no new art is being made by artists, because the risk of putting it online means AI will slurp it up? What happens when publishers are no longer incentivized to create content because AI will use it without giving credit or directing traffic to their sites?

The incentive structure for artists and creators to put their work online entirely disappears and then there’s nothing to feed the dataset. All we end up with is AI slop.

If things continue in that direction, we’re talking about art that is either completely frozen in time, with no new inputs or a regurgitation of the same old same old.

We’re already seeing this homogenization in real time, and it often reminds me of the music industry. The 60’s had its own distinct sound. Same with the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.

But modern music? So much of it simply samples from older music. While there are artists who are creating something entirely new, it’s not nearly as common. And there’s no longer a distinct generational sound.

The big thing that changed? Technology advanced. And what should have been a move toward more creative freedom and more experimentation ultimately led to more sameness.

We’ve watched this story play out in more than one industry, but technology has a fascinating way of stripping out the humanity of whatever it is we’re creating. It’s rare that the benefits outweigh the downsides.

To quote Taylor Swift, “I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending.”

So what’s going to happen to photography in the future?

Honestly, I don’t know if I can answer this question, largely because I don’t think there’s an answer set in stone right now. Ultimately, we, as human beings, will get to decide whether photography becomes obsolete or not.

When digital photography entered the scene, film photography became less popular. But it never became obsolete. In fact, its high-touch, high-effort existence has placed it squarely in the world of luxury. People have inherently put a premium on film imagery.

We’re living in a highly divided age, where so much of what we consume, both physical and digital goods, are machine-made. Yet people are pushing back and trying to live a more handmade, analog lifestyle.

And I think this pushback is only amplified by AI. Is AI getting better and better at making human-like art, through writing, graphics, and photography? Yes.

But at the end of the day, art created by AI is just that: art made by a machine. There will always be a market for it, but I tend to think there will continue to be a market for what the human mind can create too.

The way I see it, in a world rampant with AI images, I believe photos taken by humans for humans will become the new, coveted luxury. A depiction of the real, human-lived experience. You can copy that using AI, but that’s all it’ll ever be: a copy.

There are a million and one tips out there for how to avoid crowds to get the photo you want: show up early, show up after everyone leaves, go on a weekday. All valid. All great options. That’s not what I want to talk about.

What about those spots where it genuinely doesn’t matter how you time it; you’re running into a lot of people no matter what you do. How do you actually capture a photo that stops you in your tracks and has you thinking to yourself: wait, did I actually just compose that?

This is what I do:

Forget about how everyone else has composed that landscape. That iconic composition of Maroon Bells? Forget about it. Not only has it been done a million times before, but it requires an immense amount of luck and timing. Even if you’re photographing a well-known, well-loved landscape, you do not have to compose it the same way as everyone else. Make your composition interesting and different. Don’t photograph the full view, zoom into a little facet of the view that tells a greater story. Or take your photo from a unique angle or perspective. Squat low. Get high. Do something different. That’s the type of stuff you’ll want framed on your wall.

Abandon the herd. The funny thing about landscape photographers is that they seem to love moving in herds. Step away from them, even if it’s just ten steps to the left. They’re all assuming that the best photo is captured where everyone else is standing, but if you’re looking to capture a wide, expansive landscape without getting another photographer in your shot, just take a few steps away from the pack. Nothing complicated, but highly overlooked. It’s always wild to me how few photographers consider this option.

Be strategic with your lens choice. When you’re in a crowded spot, a wide angle lens can often be your worst enemy. And while I personally favor fixed lenses over zoom lenses, in a crowded landscape a zoom is often your best friend and can be the difference between photographing a landscape that looks like pure solitude and one where Uncle Bob and his point and shoot camera are in the corner of your shot.

Make the people a part of the composition. Sometimes the crowd of people in the spot you’re photographing is the story. A bustling city street in the heart of New York. A packed cafe patio on a cozy Paris corner. These are places where the image you’re capturing doesn’t feel complete unless there’s someone (or many someones) in frame. It captures the authenticity of the place.

I think as photographers, we have a tendency to shy away from busy places when we’re capturing photos, but less than ideal conditions are the kind of thing that really stretches us to work with challenging conditions. At least in my experience, I tend to be most proud of the images I’ve taken when I’ve had to work with a complicated environment.

Sometimes those limitations are what allow us to reach our true potential as artists. So photograph in the busy place. Don’t worry about coordinating your timing perfectly to avoid the crowds. Embrace the situation and let it stretch you in ways you never could have imagined. There’s a good chance you’ll like your photos even more because of it.

The reality is, we take more photos these days than we have hours in the day to look back on them, and yet you’d probably be hard pressed to find photos in your camera roll that go beyond capturing a moment and move into the realm of true storytelling.

Call me crazy, but I’m a believer that memorializing a moment and telling a story are not the same thing. Taking a photo of a cabin in the mountains during a road trip captures a memory. It freezes the scene as a moment in time. But that’s all it is: a simple snapshot.

Storytelling requires more. To tell a story of that same scene, you might angle yourself so part of the cabin is masked behind trees, sharing a story of seclusion.

You may avoid a wide angle lens so that the mountains behind the cabin look taller. They’d tower over the little building, eating up almost the entire frame and showcasing the cabin as a true hideaway amongst the giants.

You could make sure the cabin dominates the foreground, creating a sense that you’re so close you’re basically being invited in over the doorstep.

That’s the story.

Each compositional choice, each lens choice, each lighting choice contributes to the story you’re telling. And that requires intention that doesn’t just accidentally happen when you’re taking a quick snap to document a memory.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for documenting quick moments and memories. As a mom, I spend much of my time doing exactly that. But I also set aside time to do true storytelling with my photography, in a way that not only documents my favorite people and places, but speaks to the soul of who they are.

When I think of storytelling in photography, I often think about the image below, taken from what used to be an 1800s prison in a mountain ghost town.

I think of how the framing and composition put you in the shoes of an inhabitant of that cell, watching the beauty of the mountains change during the fall season, the bars a constant reminder that you aren’t free to truly enjoy it.

The perspective paints the story. That same photograph, if I were to move my lens through the bars so you don’t see them, wouldn’t have the same impact.

Okay, okay, you get it by now. But how do you actually go about storytelling through your imagery?

These are a few of the things I look out for.

Chase interesting lighting. This could be alpenglow lighting up the peak of a mountain with a warm orangey-maroon hue. It could be streams of light beaming up from behind the horizon line during golden hour. It could be the ethereal, mystical color of moonlight glowing over a wide open desert landscape. Sometimes the lighting itself is the story. This is usually the first thing I notice.

Identify leading lines. Not every photo is taken in beautiful lighting, but that doesn’t mean you can’t tell a story. When you’re dealing with flat or otherwise uninteresting light, look for leading lines that point to your subject. Photographing a person on an old, narrow European street is quite possibly one of my favorite examples of this. Everything from the buildings lining the street to the road itself all serve as a leading line to the person serving as the subject of the photo.

Look for tension. Or better yet, create tension. For me, tension comes in two forms: whitespace and a complete lack of whitespace. An image with a lot of whitespace (like when you have a mountain taking up a tiny portion of the bottom of a frame, but the sky taking up most of it), creates a tension that holds your eye. You can construct the reverse effect by completely cutting out the whitespace to craft an intentionally layered and almost claustrophobic effect. They both tell very powerful, but completely opposite, stories.

Incorporate movement. In landscape photography, this could be photographing a car driving down a mountain road at night, where you opt for a very slow shutter speed so the taillights streak across the landscape. In portrait photography, this could be taking an image of a person standing still on a busy street, while a blur of people moves around them.

Sometimes the story isn’t obvious. And sometimes it requires getting on the ground and photographing upwards. Or getting up high and photographing down. It requires a bit of digging and a bit of experimentation, but that’s exactly why the images that tell a story move us and the ones that simply document a moment don’t.

So next time you have your camera in hand, take a second. Pause. Ask yourself: what’s the story I’m trying to tell?

Hiking was quite possibly one of the last things I was interested in doing, until I begrudgingly gave it a try to appease my then-boyfriend, now-husband.

Jokes on me, because I quickly fell head-over-heels.

Make no mistake, though, I was a pretty bad hiker at the start. One of my first mountain hikes had me crawling on the trail because I was terrified of the sharp cliff-sides.

Fast forward to today, and I hike more than my husband does. My point? I’ve been the person who had absolutely no experience as a hiker, and if there’s one thing I know it’s that people can totally change and adapt.

So if you’ve been thinking about getting into hiking but you’re low key a little terrified of the idea, this is what I’d do. It’s the advice I’d give to myself if I could turn back the clock.

Make a hiking bucket list. Whether it’s a mood board or a spreadsheet or your favorite hikes saved in your AllTrails account, list them out. Having it written down holds you accountable. And when there are images tied to the list, it’s added inspo.

Don’t let your gear stop you from getting outside. Do you have shoes that cover your toes and give you decent traction? For many beginner hikes, that’s all that’s needed. Save the gear optimization for later.

Start flat and work your way to an incline. When it comes to hiking, the most difficult part usually isn’t actually the length of the hike. It’s the elevation gain. The hike that feels like you’re on the StairMaster (even if it’s a mile short) is the one that’ll kick your butt. Not the 7 mile trek on flat ground. So start your hiking journey with minimal or low elevation gain hikes and work your way up from there.

Go with a friend (or group of friends). Getting into hiking is intimidating enough if you’re doing it alone. But there’s something so reassuring about starting a new adventure with a friend. It takes the pressure off. If you don’t have any friends who are into hiking, there are also so many awesome hiking groups on social media.

Train for the elevation you want to hike at. If you’re planning to hike at altitude, you’ll notice you get tired faster and feel like you’re exerting more energy (because you quite literally are). The air is thinner. There’s less oxygen. Your body has to work harder, and so you have to train accordingly. How does this translate? If you live at lower elevations, practice on hikes that are longer and require more elevation gain than the one you’re doing at altitude.

But remember that endurance isn’t everything. Yes, training your heart to keep up, particularly at higher elevations, is important. But the reality is that when you’re tackling a hike with elevation gain, sometimes your legs give out first. Don’t underestimate the value of leg day. I remember thinking cardio was the end all when I first started hiking. But being able to take on some of my bucket list hikes actually only happened once I strengthened my legs.

Turn around before you feel completely exhausted. Don’t wait until your legs can barely hold you up anymore. Or when your heart feels like it’s on fire. Here’s the thing: you don’t actually have to finish every hike you start. The fact that you got out on the trail should be celebrated. If you don’t finish a hike one time, come back the next, when you feel ready. No shame in that.

Don’t worry about the pace other hikers are moving at. When you’re hiking, focus on your own journey and the scenery around you. Forget about the dude who started at the same time as you but somehow made it up and down the mountain in record speed. He’s probably a trail runner anyway, and we all know those folks are a different breed.

Treat yourself. Listen, post-hike burritos are elite. I don’t make the rules. If you’ve pushed yourself on a hike and done something hard, treat yourself after the fact with some delicious post-trek fuel. It gives you something to look forward to the entire journey.

And if you’re hiking in Colorado, that burrito better have green chili smothered all over it. That’s all I have to say about that.

P.S. If you happen to be an experienced hiker and you’re reading this, what advice would you give to your newbie hiker self if you could go back in time?