Capturing What Moments Mean, Not Just What They Look Like
The world doesn’t need another photography trick. It needs a way to preserve the stories that matter. This is my journey from capturing images to capturing meaning—and why it’s the work I feel called
Welcome to another episode of UnRambling, where I record myself while biking, hiking, running, driving, walking, or swimming—well, maybe not swimming. I then transcribe my thoughts to retain the magical ideas often left out on the trail.
Today is Tuesday, February 11, 2025, and I am walking with my three dogs in the forest behind my house.
Looking Back at the Journey
During my morning journaling routine, I reflected on where I’ve been and how far I’ve come over the past few months. While I still have a long way to go, I feel more focused on my style and the message I want to deliver.
As I started walking, I wondered where I was in my journey and how that connected to those around me. I’m now in my late 50s. My kids have graduated from high school—one even from college. Life feels different. My career as a photographer, journalist and storyteller is different, too. Twenty-five years ago, everything looked so different, yet here I am, still figuring things out. Adapting.
Observing the Next Generation
Every year, I photograph hundreds of young athletes in hockey, dance, basketball, football, and soccer—all types of youth sports.
That means I spend a lot of time around young families. I see parents with newborns, toddlers, tweens, and teens. I used to be those parents. But when I see their challenges—not unlike those I experienced, endured, and enjoyed—it’s hard to imagine myself in that stage of life again.
It’s a similar feeling when I see young photographers just starting out—high schoolers, early college grads, and young artists discovering the joy of photography. They post, shoot, and improve at an incredible pace. I’ve watched some go from hesitant beginners to confident professionals in just a few years. Some focus on weddings and newborns, others on sports or senior portraits—watching them find their style and niche is fascinating.
But just like I look at young parents and remember my early days, I look at these fresh photographers and recognize echoes of my own path.
I’m faced with the Realities of Competition
I’d be lying if I didn’t feel the sting of competition sometimes. There are moments when I see younger photographers booking clients who, years ago, would have hired me instead. It’s easy to feel like they’re taking over “my market.” But things have changed. The barriers to entry are lower, and with today’s technology, there are better cameras, editing presets and audience-building tools. I feel like the learning curve is so much shorter nowadays, and feedback is instant.
There’s no waiting to see what the images look like, and there really are no costs to practice. Their path to becoming professional was much faster than mine. Yet, their hunger and willingness to charge less aren’t games I’m willing to play.
And yet, I get it—every generation reshapes the field, just like we did when we started. That’s how things evolve. But it does make me step back and ask myself: What is my role now? What value do I provide?
It made me think about growth and perspective
There’s a quote I heard once: If the best work in your portfolio is more than a couple of years old, you aren’t growing. If you’re still showcasing old work as your best, you’re not evolving. Worse, you're moving backward if your peers and competitors improve while you stay the same.
It forced me to think beyond how to improve to what I want to do next.
I’m at a career stage where many transition into teaching and mentoring. What do I have to offer young parents and photographers? How can I help them grow into the storytellers or “moment capturer” that I was trying to become 25 years ago?
What’s the question everyone asks? “What would I tell my younger self?”
On that note, I've often focused on my value.
When I first started, cameras used film. It was expensive to shoot and process the images. There weren't digital tools, and you had to wait to see the photographs you took. Often, that waiting involved hours in the darkroom souping film and making prints, waiting for things to dry.
Back then, I felt like I was providing a service that was in limited supply. The gear was expensive, skills were hard to acquire, and the barrier to entry was high.
The biggest problem was that no one walked around with megapixel cameras in their pockets. Capturing moments was expensive and cumbersome.
But now that need is met by cellphone cameras and all the new, upcoming photographers.
So, I’m back to asking myself: What unique service can I provide?
The answer lies in what I've learned from so many years in this field. This service is unique to my path and perspective.
Moving Beyond Tricks
I know you can teach an old dog new tricks—because I’m that old dog and still love learning.
But I also know that after decades of photography, there are not many technical tricks I haven’t already learned or experimented with. And honestly, that’s not what excites me anymore.
There’s so much emphasis on learning the latest lighting technique or editing style. But I realized at some point that those things don’t matter most. There’s so much more to a moment than meets the eye. And yet, photography today leans even harder into the illusion—focusing on the aesthetic over the essence. The tricks many photographers use now feel like just that—tricks. They don’t capture the truth.
That’s why I don’t want to spend my time teaching people how to pose or use Photoshop. The internet doesn’t need another tutorial on lighting setups and camera settings, but there is a gap that no one seems to be filling.
My Mission: Capturing What Moments Mean
People don’t know how to document their lives in a meaningful way.
Parents and grandparents lose their stories every day to memory loss, dementia, and the simple passage of time. Even when they do try to capture stories, they default to a dry list of events: "And then this happened, and then this happened…" They don’t ask the deeper questions. They don’t think about why a moment matters. And even if they do, they feel there’s no place to put it.
When families go through old journals, scrapbooks, and memorabilia, there is no system for cataloging the pieces that truly matter. This can be overwhelming. People stumble across incredible details, but they get lost again without structure.
Memories remain scattered, waiting to be rediscovered by chance.
That’s what I want to change.
Instead of competing, I want to help the next generation of photographers and parents understand what moments look like and what they mean. I want to give them the tools and thinking I wish I had when my kids were growing up.
Why This Matters
At the end of the day, our lives aren’t about the images we post. They’re about the stories people tell about us when we’re gone. These stories define who we are and the impact we make.
Parents do their best to raise responsible, hardworking young adults. But as they enter the world, we also have another responsibility: to document who they were. Our job is to capture the nuances of their growth—their thoughts, experiences, quirks—so that one day, they’ll have a record of the journey that shaped them and insights into how they’ve become who they are.
This isn’t just about nostalgia.
It’s about legacy—not in a grandiose, untouchable way, but in a deeply personal sense. It’s about giving the people we love a way to hold onto who they were, where they came from, and the moments that made them.
That’s the work I feel called to do.
Live. Capture. Catalog. Connect. Repeat.