A little backstory.

“Designing for good!” was what I told myself repeatedly on my one-track education path to be a career pixel pusher but the reality was a never-ending landslide of design gigs that were all meant to turn a profit for corporate entities of some kind.

While the morally upright path of designing for non-profits/upstanding causes certainly do exist, they don’t pay enough to justify the time spent; they’re almost exclusively luxury pet projects for otherwise successful designers who have sold their soul in our dystopian capitalist reality.

Hollowed out by the salary grind and desperate for a good night’s rest after 16+ years of after-hour pet projects, I wanted a change. I picked up a camera on a whim in 2019 and have been obsessed with the craft since.

The photo appeal.

My workaholic habit of “work after work and think about work while sustaining this human body in order to keep working” meant that I craved for downtime but felt guilty for having earned them between projects. I needed an excuse to be present and away from my incredibly toxic lifestyle and photography was it.

A plane ticket to Iceland 2019 gave me the perfect reason to spend too much on gear to manipulate myself into learning the trade. The girlfriend and I rented a car, circled the island in a week making 5-10min pit stops at scenic destinations taking pictures like we had guns held to our heads.

That isn’t the way to travel but having the perfect subject matter under tight time constraints meant that I had to learn and learn quick and it was fucking exhilarating (in hindsight).

Within a week, I had a taste of what photography meant (to me). It satiated my need to work/do stuff while allowing me to pause, be present, and observe/appreciate the world around me. And because I had a means to pause, do stuff, AND create freely, it did wonders to dig me out of that awful career-driven, capitalist hole that I found myself in.

It’s truly one of the best things to have happened to me and being able to say “I find joy in picking up my camera” or even use the word “joy” in a personal context has been a bit of a game changer.

I don’t know man, I’d write more but I’d rather be out shooting.