Welcome — and why I'm calling this "Emotography"

I've been putting off starting this blog for longer than I'd like to admit. Not because I didn't have anything to say, but because I kept getting stuck on one question: what is this actually about?

I take a lot of different kinds of photos. Some weeks I'm chasing light across a landscape at 5 a.m. Other weeks I'm on a street corner trying to catch a stranger's expression before it disappears, or sitting across from a friend with a camera between us, waiting for them to forget it's there. On paper, that's three or four different genres. For a long time I thought I needed to "pick a lane" — become a portrait photographer, or a street photographer, or a landscape guy — because that's what seems to make sense to a portfolio, or an algorithm, or anyone trying to categorize what I do.

But the more I shot, the more I noticed the thing that actually connects all of it isn't the subject. It's not people versus places versus moments. It's what I'm chasing underneath all of that: a feeling. A specific, hard-to-name feeling that shows up sometimes in a face, sometimes in the way fog sits on a hillside, sometimes in a gesture on a crowded street that lasts half a second.

That's where the name comes from. Emotography — the emotion is the subject. The camera is just how I get to it.

What this blog will actually be

I want this to be an honest record of that chase, not a highlight reel. So you can expect:

• Photos I'm proud of, and the story of what I was feeling or noticing when I took them
• Photos that didn't quite work, and what I learned trying
• Thoughts on the mix of genres I shoot in, and why I've stopped apologizing for not specializing
• The occasional deep dive into a single image — what's really going on in it, technically and emotionally

I'm not going to pretend I have a grand theory of photography figured out. I mostly have a feeling I keep trying to catch, and a camera I keep bringing with me in case it shows up.

Why "the art of the image" matters to me

A photograph is evidence that a moment existed. But the ones that stay with me aren't just evidence — they're translation. They take something invisible (a mood, a tension, a tenderness) and make it visible, so someone else who wasn't there can feel a version of it too.

That's the art part. Anyone can point a camera at something. The work — the actual craft — is in noticing what's worth pointing it at, and then getting out of the way enough to let the feeling come through.

I don't always succeed. But I'd rather chase that and miss than aim for something safer and easier to hit.

Come along

If you're here, thank you for showing up at the very beginning of this. I don't know exactly what this blog will turn into, but I know it'll be honest, it'll be a little different every week, and it'll always come back to that same question: what does this actually feel like?

Let's find out together.