The AI Obsession
The AI Obsession
Yesterday, I watched Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die and it was... unsettling.
Not horror-movie unsettling. Not jump-scare unsettling. More the kind of unsettling that sits quietly in the passenger seat of your brain afterward, occasionally clearing its throat while you're trying to think about something else.
If you haven't seen it, let me summarize the premise in a way that somehow manages not to spoil anything.
Summary: A man travels back from the future to recruit a team of misfits in order to prevent the creation of a sentient AI that will eventually wipe out humanity as we know it.
And yet, somehow, that summary tells you almost nothing about the movie.
Seriously. Go watch it. Then come back and tell me I'm wrong.
The film itself isn't really what disturbed me, though. What got under my skin was the way AI, and humanity's relationship with it, is discussed throughout the story. It felt less like science fiction and more like someone had wandered into a boardroom meeting, a technology conference, and a social media marketing seminar, then blended them together into a screenplay.
At this point, I assume there are still a handful of people somewhere on Earth who haven't heard the term AI. Maybe they're living happily in a cabin in the woods. Maybe they're on a fishing boat somewhere. Maybe they've simply achieved enlightenment and stopped reading headlines.
But if you're reading this blog, you've almost certainly heard of AI.
You couldn't avoid it if you tried.
AI is everywhere.
Every product has AI.
Every company has AI.
Every app has AI.
Every toaster is apparently one firmware update away from becoming self-aware and demanding voting rights.
We've reached a strange moment in history where companies are attaching the letters "A" and "I" to absolutely everything, whether artificial intelligence is involved or not. There seems to be a growing belief that if a product doesn't have AI, then it must somehow be outdated, incomplete, or inferior.
As though humanity collectively woke up one morning and decided that software wasn't enough anymore. It needed to sound like it had read three philosophy books and was planning a hostile takeover.
Let me give you a few examples.
A few weeks ago, I noticed several websites listing my camera, the Sony a7III, as having AI features.
Now, for those unfamiliar with camera history, the Sony a7III was released in early 2018. Back then, AI wasn't being sprinkled onto marketing materials like parmesan cheese at an Italian restaurant. It was just a remarkably good camera.
Yet somehow, sites like B&H, Amazon, and others had begun describing certain features as AI-powered.
They aren't.
The camera didn't magically become smarter while sitting on my shelf.
No secret update transformed it into a silicon philosopher.
The features were the same features it has always had. They had simply been renamed.
Why?
Because AI sells.
That's it.
That's the whole explanation.
People want AI, whether they understand it or not. Whether it provides value or not. Whether it actually exists or not.
It's the modern equivalent of putting "all-natural" on a bottle of water.
I see the same thing in my day job.
As some of you know, I work in software sales.
Not long ago, I was speaking with a prospective customer about a software platform.
At one point he asked me, "Does it have AI?"
The answer was no.
So I asked him a simple question:
"What would you want the AI to do?"
He paused.
Then admitted he wasn't sure.
He just wanted it to have AI.
So I asked again.
"What problem are you trying to solve? What would you want AI to accomplish for you?"
Again, no answer.
Not because he was uninformed or unintelligent. Quite the opposite. He was a smart guy.
But somewhere along the way, AI had become the goal rather than the tool.
It's a bit like walking into a hardware store and demanding a hammer without knowing whether you're building a deck, hanging a picture, or attempting to fight a bear.
The hammer isn't the objective.
The outcome is.
This morning brought another example.
I logged into WordPress and noticed a shiny new button proudly labeled "AI Link Genius."
Naturally, I clicked it.
I had to know.
Was this some revolutionary new technology?
Would it analyze my content and create intelligent pathways through my writing?
Would it achieve digital enlightenment?
No.
It checked links.
That's it.
It was the exact same feature that periodically scans my site looking for broken links and optimization opportunities.
A feature WordPress and related plugins have had for years.
The interface was the same.
The functionality was the same.
Everything was the same.
Someone had simply stapled the letters "AI" onto the front of it and sent it back into the world wearing a fake mustache.
Apparently that's innovation now.
To be fair, some of this madness appears to be fading.
The AI descriptions attached to the Sony a7III seem to have disappeared from many major retailers, and some original product descriptions have returned.
That's encouraging.
But the broader trend remains.
Every week another product emerges from the marketing laboratory wearing an AI sticker like a participation trophy.
It's exhausting.
Some days it makes me feel like the guy standing on a street corner wearing a tinfoil hat and muttering about the end times.
The difference is that the tinfoil hat guy is usually worried about aliens.
I'm worried about marketing departments.
Thankfully, I have photography.
Photography remains one of the few things that consistently pulls me back to reality.
A camera doesn't care about quarterly earnings reports.
Film doesn't care about investor presentations.
Light doesn't care about buzzwords.
The photons have no interest whatsoever in your product roadmap.
Recently, I've found myself spending less time scrolling through social media and more time looking at sculpture, classical art, and Renaissance paintings.
Many of them feature nudity, of course, but what fascinates me isn't the nudity itself.
It's the drapery.
The fabric.
The way cloth seems to float, twist, conceal, reveal, and guide the eye through an image.
The way marble somehow looks softer than skin.
The way painters managed to create movement from stillness.
I wanted to see if I could capture some of that feeling through photography.
Not recreate it exactly.
Just borrow a little of the language.
Translate it into a modern photograph.
Thankfully, Natalie was available and willing to help me indulge this particular artistic rabbit hole.
Armed with nothing more sophisticated than my decidedly non-AI Sony a7III, an Olympus mju-II, a Canon AE-1, and a collection of fabric that probably looked suspicious to anyone passing by, we set out to create something.
No prompts.
No generators.
No algorithms.
No machine learning.
Just two humans making art.
One of us standing behind the camera.
One of us standing in front of it.
I've only edited a small fraction of the images so far, and more can be found over on Patreon, but I'm genuinely proud of what we created.
They're beautiful.
Not because technology made them beautiful.
Not because software decided what beauty should look like.
They're beautiful because two people collaborated, experimented, failed a few times, laughed a few times, adjusted the fabric, adjusted the light, and kept creating until something clicked.
Maybe that makes me old-fashioned.
Maybe someday I'll be the guy yelling at clouds while wearing a tinfoil hat and clutching a film camera.
But at least I'll be making art.
And for now, that's enough.
Because despite all the marketing campaigns, all the buzzwords, all the promises that AI will inevitably transform every aspect of human existence, I still believe there is tremendous value in creating something with your own hands.
A photograph.
A painting.
A sculpture.
A story.
A conversation.
Things made by people remain meaningful precisely because people made them.
And until someone invents an AI capable of wandering through a field at sunset, getting distracted by the way light hits a piece of fabric, and then spending three hours chasing an idea that may or may not work simply because it feels interesting...
I think we'll be okay.
Self-Doubt and Creativity: He Wouldn't Believe It
Self-Doubt and Creativity: He Wouldn't Believe It
I've said it before. I'll probably say it again, the way you keep returning to a scar just to confirm it still belongs to you.
But God, I wish I could go back.
Not to fix anything. I want to materialize out of nowhere, slide into the booth across from my younger self, who is probably nursing chips and salsa in a Mexican restaurant scribbling in his journal, convinced the world had already decided its opinion of him — and just show him.
Not tell him. Telling never worked on me. Show him.
Spread it all out on the table. The photographs. The art. The projects that haven't even happened yet, built in collaboration with people he hasn't met, in rooms he hasn't stood in, for reasons he couldn't have invented on his best day. Let him turn it over in his hands. Let him squint at it under the lights.
He wouldn't believe it. That's the whole point. He'd look at me like I was running a con, because that's what his life had taught him to expect, the bait, then the switch. He'd be waiting for the catch.
There is no catch, kid. That's the most disorienting part.
The work is real. It's strange and it's real and it came from somewhere inside you that you keep trying to board up like a condemned building. Stop that. Quit apologizing for the weird corners. The weird corners are load-bearing.
Someday, someone's going to hand you a project and trust you to do something extraordinary with it, and you're going to be so alarmed by that trust that you almost fumble it... but you won't. You'll find the thing that lives underneath the obvious answer, the image that says what words keep failing to say, and you'll make it real.
Back then, I was sure that I was devoid of artistic talent. That creative projects were for other people, and that any effort I made at art would be pointless.
He wouldn't believe it. But I'd make him look anyway.
Vintage Camera Advertisements: The Beautiful Art of Selling Cameras in the 1980s
This morning started the way a lot of mornings start now: coffee in hand, thumb scrolling through Instagram Reels. Once upon a time people sat at the breakfast table with a newspaper and caught up on the world while the toast cooled. Now we sit there half-awake, letting the algorithm decide what we’re going to look at before the caffeine fully kicks in.
Somewhere in that endless stream of videos, a creator started talking about the Internet Archive. I’ll admit something that might sound a little strange for someone who spends plenty of time online, I had never actually explored it before. I knew it existed, of course, but I’d never gone wandering through it myself.
In the video, the creator mentioned that the Archive contains scans of old print advertisements from magazines. That alone was enough to grab my attention. I’ve always had a soft spot for vintage design and photography. Something about the look and feel of older ads just hits a certain aesthetic nerve for me.
So naturally I opened up a browser and decided to see what all the fuss was about.
It didn’t take long before I landed on a page filled with old magazine ads. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. It felt a little like rummaging through a dusty attic full of old magazines someone forgot to throw away, except everything was neatly scanned and waiting for you to stumble across it.
Two ads jumped out almost immediately. Both came from an April 1986 issue of Playboy.
Now this might surprise some people, but growing up Mormon meant I didn’t exactly have access to many Playboy magazines. So even now, as an adult, my experience with the magazine is pretty limited. Like most people, I grew up hearing the classic joke about people claiming they read Playboy “for the articles,” and I always assumed that was just a clever excuse.
What I didn’t realize until today is that back in the 80s and 90s a huge chunk of the magazine was actually articles and advertisements. From what I could see, something like eighty percent of the pages were writing or ads, leaving only a smaller portion for what most people immediately associate with the magazine.
And some of those articles were surprisingly serious.
While browsing, I stumbled across a long piece about the War on Drugs and the propaganda surrounding it. Not a throwaway article either, the writer had clearly done his homework. It was thoughtful, detailed, and the kind of thing that probably gave readers plenty to chew on.
It definitely wasn’t what I expected when I clicked into a random Playboy issue from the 80s.
But honestly, the real highlight for me was the advertising.
Inside that same issue were two camera ads, one for Canon and one for Olympus, and they immediately caught my eye. They were
beautifully done. Strong composition, interesting lighting, and just enough storytelling in the image to make you imagine the kind of life you might live with that camera in your hands.
They just don’t make ads like that anymore.
What struck me most is that these cameras are now decades old, yet those advertisements still have the power to make me want one. That’s impressive. Most modern ads barely stick in your memory long enough to survive the next scroll.
These older ads feel different. They’re stylish, thoughtful, and very clearly made by people who understood photography and human psychology. They weren’t just selling a product, they were selling a feeling.
And as someone who loves photography, that kind of thing is endlessly interesting. There’s a lot to study there. The lighting. The styling. The mood. All of it could easily inspire ideas for my own work.
So I’m genuinely grateful to that random creator on Instagram who mentioned the Internet Archive this morning. What started as casual scrolling over coffee turned into discovering an entire world of old magazines, articles, and beautifully crafted advertisements.
Something tells me I’ll be spending a lot more time wandering through the Archive in the months ahead. And honestly, there are worse ways to lose an afternoon than flipping through the visual history of the past.
Photography Gatekeeping: Why Some Photographers Feel the Need to Guard the Gate
There are a lot of things in this world that I simply don’t understand.
Some of them are big, complicated questions that political scientists, historians, and late night talk show hosts will probably argue about for the next hundred years. For example, I will never understand why anyone voted for Donald Trump. That one alone could keep a panel of experts busy for decades.
I will also never understand why people argue with complete strangers on Facebook like they’re defending their doctoral thesis in the comments section of a blurry meme.
But one thing that really puzzles me is this strange human urge to decide who counts as a “real” fan of something.
You see it everywhere.
Someone casually mentions they like Star Wars, and almost immediately someone shows up to administer the loyalty exam.
“Oh yeah? If you’re a real Star Wars fan, name all the lightsaber colors and what each one means.”
Why?
Why do we do this?
Why can’t someone just enjoy a thing without having to pass some kind of pop quiz designed by the self-appointed High Council of Nerd Credentials?
I saw a perfect example of this recently while scrolling through Instagram. A street photographer was walking through New York City filming an IG reel. As he passed a man on the sidewalk, the guy casually said, almost like a drive-by insult:
“Real photographers shoot with film.”
And I remember thinking… what a strange thing to say to someone.
Why do we feel the need to build these little fences around our hobbies? Why do we put up gates and then stand there deciding who’s allowed in and who isn’t? What exactly do we gain from that?
I’ve never understood it.
Maybe that’s partly because of how I got started in photography about ten years ago.
Back then I knew two things for certain. First, I didn’t know very much about photography. Second, I really wanted to learn how to take great photos.
The problem was that I didn’t personally know any great photographers. I didn’t have a mentor or a teacher showing me the ropes. So I did what a lot of people did at the time. I joined a few photography groups on Facebook.
For a while I just watched the conversations. People sharing photos, talking about cameras, arguing about technique. It seemed like a place where someone like me might actually learn something.
Eventually I got brave enough to post a few of my own photos.
Now, to be clear, I wasn’t under any illusion that they were great. They weren’t. They were amateur at best. But I wanted to get better, and the only way to do that was to ask people who knew more than I did.
So I posted the photos and asked if anyone had advice on how I could improve.
I didn’t get advice.
What I got instead were hundreds of comments telling me how terrible my photos were. People telling me I should sell my camera gear and quit photography altogether. That I wasn’t an artist. That I would never amount to anything.
It got so bad that eventually the owner of the Facebook group stepped in and told people to back off. But by that point the damage had already been done.
So I left the group.
But here’s the thing. Instead of quitting photography like those commenters suggested, I did the exact opposite. I decided I was going to prove them wrong.
For the last ten years I’ve practiced constantly. I’ve studied photography, experimented with different styles, made mistakes, learned from them, and kept going.
And today, if I’m being completely honest, I would say I’m equal to, if not better that, many of the photographers who gave me grief back then.
Not because I’m some kind of prodigy.
Just because I didn’t stop.
What’s strange, though, is that ten years later I still see the same behavior in photography communities. Gatekeeping knowledge. Mocking beginners. Acting like jerks toward anyone who hasn’t been doing it as long as they have.
And I still don’t understand it.
Why do we deliberately create this us versus them mentality? Why do we separate ourselves into little tribes just so we can feel superior to someone else?
It’s toxic. And honestly, it needs to stop.
So if you’re reading this, I want to offer a small challenge.
This week, find someone who is just starting out at something. Photography, writing, music, anything. And instead of testing them or criticizing them just for being new, try lifting them up.
Encourage them. Share something you’ve learned. Help them improve.
Because every single one of us started out not knowing what we were doing.
And the world would probably be a much better place if we spent less time guarding the gate… and more time holding it open for the next person.
A Creative Photography Collaboration: Six Years of Friendship, Art, and Beautiful Chaos
There are people who drift into your life like weather systems, sudden, unexpected, and impossible to ignore, and then there are people who arrive as if they’ve always been there, simply waiting for you to catch up. The second kind are rare. They feel less like coincidence and more like inevitability. Two mismatched puzzle pieces discovering, with mild surprise, that they fit.
That’s Maeve.
Sometimes this connection shows up as family, sometimes as romance, and sometimes — in the best possible plot twist, it arrives disguised as friendship. The kind of friendship where you don’t need armor. No masks. No posturing. Just honest conversation, shared silence, ridiculous laughter, and the quiet relief of knowing you’re safe being exactly who you are.
Maeve has been that person for me for six years now.
We met, as all modern legends do, on TikTok, back when I was running the Creepy Guy Hotline, a strange little corner of the internet where humor, empathy, and mild chaos intersected. Even before we met in person, there was a creative electricity between us, a shared wavelength that didn’t require much translation. We just… got it. Got each other.
When 2020 finally loosened its grip on the world, I drove from Orlando to Tampa to meet Maeve face-to-face for the first time and shoot together. I was vibrating with excitement. I had triple-checked my gear, meticulously packed everything, and felt thoroughly prepared, which is, of course, when the universe decided to humble me.
Mid-unpack, I realized I was missing a critical piece of equipment. Without it, most of my lighting setup was effectively decorative. The only functional light I had was a powerful flashlight usually reserved for rummaging through gear bags and a single RGB panel light. In short: not ideal. I was mortified.
Maeve, naturally, smiled.
Not a stressed smile. Not a polite one. A genuine, grounding, “we’ve got this” smile. And with that, we adapted. We improvised. We leaned into limitation and turned it into atmosphere. What followed was a shoot full of experimentation, play, and creative problem-solving, and somehow, against all logic, we created images that remain some of my favorites to this day.
Since then, we’ve built something steady and rare. A friendship anchored in support, honesty, and mutual belief. We’ve stood beside each other through illness, surgeries, exhaustion, and self-doubt. We’ve celebrated wins, mourned losses, held each other accountable, and reminded one another who we are when the world tried to blur the edges.
And through it all, we’ve made art.
Fine art nudes. Boudoir. Bold, unflinching portraits. Soft moments. Powerful ones. Images that tell stories and hold emotion. Every shoot feels less like work and more like collaboration in its purest form, two creative minds chasing something honest and beautiful.
It is, without question, a privilege to know Maeve. To work with her. To create alongside her. And today, as we celebrate her birthday, I find myself overwhelmingly grateful that this strange, winding path brought her into my life.
So here’s to Maeve, to her brilliance, her resilience, her kindness, and her creative fire. Here’s to six years of friendship, countless images, and many more adventures still waiting in the wings.
Happy Birthday, Maeve. May this year bring you light, laughter, and just enough chaos to keep things interesting. 🎂✨
Emotional Vulnerability in Relationships
Emotional Vulnerability in Relationships
At the start of 2026, I made a simple decision: I was going to start posting more of my photography to Reddit. Not with a master plan, not with spreadsheets and content calendars, just show up once a day and throw my work into the wild to see what happened.
What happened surprised me.
In a month and a half, I saw more engagement and more real human interaction than I got on Instagram during all of 2025. Which feels backwards. Instagram used to be the place for photographers. Now it feels like a shopping mall where everyone’s yelling and no one’s listening. Social media is losing its magic, and people are starting to realize that growing on any Meta platform now is like trying to plant flowers in concrete. You can try, but the odds are not in your favor.
But the real surprise wasn’t the numbers. It was my inbox.
I started getting messages from husbands, careful, hesitant messages, from men who wanted their wives to do a boudoir shoot but were afraid something might happen during the session. Afraid of boundaries being crossed. Afraid of discomfort. Afraid of opening doors they weren’t sure they could close.
I wrote about this last week, but I want to come at it from a different angle.
A photoshoot should feel safe. Always. But so should a relationship. And I’ve been shocked by how many people don’t feel emotionally safe with their own partners. Not unsafe in a dramatic sense, but in the quiet, everyday way that makes honesty feel risky. The kind of unsafe that teaches you to swallow your feelings and call it peace.
Now, I’m no saint. I carry my own collection of anxieties, neatly stacked like old moving boxes I never quite unpacked. I’ve dealt with anxiety most of my life. I take medication. I see a therapist every week. Most of the time, that’s enough to keep me steady.
But for the last month, my anxiety has been loud.
The last time it was this bad, I was going through a divorce, closing down a business, and moving to a new state with a woman I wasn’t even sure I wanted to keep dating. That level of chaos earns its anxiety. This time? Nothing is falling apart. No disasters. No major life upheavals. And yet, some days, just breathing feels like work.
For a long time, I didn’t talk about any of this. My ex-wife used to publicly mock me for being depressed, and that kind of thing teaches you fast. So I learned to keep it to myself. To deal with it quietly. To not burden anyone else with my internal storms.
But that’s not how I want to live anymore.
So I’m trying to be more open. Talking with Leslie. Letting a few trusted people see the parts of me that aren’t polished or easy. Admitting that sometimes I’m not okay. Not because it magically fixes anything, it doesn’t, but because learning to be vulnerable feels like learning how to breathe again after holding your breath for years.
And that circles me right back to those messages from Reddit.
To the men wishing their wives would do a boudoir shoot: be honest with her. Be vulnerable with her. Not because you want a photoshoot, but because real intimacy grows out of honesty. Out of trust. Out of being brave enough to show your cards instead of always keeping them close to your chest.
Your relationship will get better because of it.
And if it doesn’t, if honesty breaks it, then it was already breaking. And you deserve a relationship where you can be fully yourself, not just the carefully edited version.
Trust me.
I’ve tried it the other way.
Stone Mountain Reflections
Stone Mountain Reflections
It’s funny how memory stretches things. Childhood recollection is a funhouse mirror, bending scale and perspective until everything feels monumental. Maybe things only seem bigger because we were smaller, but when I dig through the mental shoebox of my early years, the world feels oversized. Trees were taller. Distances were longer. Hills were mountains. And Stone Mountain, in my memory, was a towering slab of granite that could casually swallow a child whole.
I was in single digit age territory when my family visited Stone Mountain Park in Georgia, and I remember the mountain being enormous, overwhelming, and just a little bit terrifying. I was convinced that one wrong step would send me tumbling into oblivion. Gravity felt personal back then.
Fast forward a few decades and a professional conference later, and I found myself back at Stone Mountain. This time, armed with adult knees, a conference badge, and a slightly more rational relationship with gravity. On the first day, we rode the lift to the top, and that was when reality gently reminded me that nostalgia has a flair for exaggeration.
Stone Mountain is… fine. It exists. But the towering, epic beast from my childhood memories had somehow been reduced to a rather unimpressive boulder. Setting aside the deeply uncomfortable and racist confederate carving on its face, the mountain itself is, aesthetically speaking, not great. It is basically a giant rock plopped in the middle of an otherwise pleasant forest. The carving does nothing to improve this situation. If anything, it makes it worse.
At the summit, I expected sweeping views and that familiar sense of awe you get when you reach the top of something. Instead, I felt mildly underwhelmed. I have stood on some truly beautiful peaks, hiking parts of the Appalachian Trail, wandering through Philmont Scout Ranch, climbing Abernathy Peak in Washington State. Stone Mountain does not belong in that company. Compared to those places, it felt small, ordinary, and oddly anticlimactic.
Every morning brought a different sky. The colors and fog spilled across the water and slowly pulled the day into existence. Those moments alone made the trip worthwhile. I photographed them digitally and also on 35mm film, because some scenes deserve to be slowed down and trusted to chemistry and patience. I cannot wait to see how those frames turn out.
So that was my week. A gentle collision between nostalgia and reality. A reminder that memory is a generous editor. A mountain that failed to live up to its legend, and a sunrise that quietly stole the show.
And yes, I still think we should stop building parks that celebrate confederate generals. But no one asked me.
Nothing Happens on a Photoshoot
Nothing Happens on a Photoshoot
I got this message today and it stuck with me. The kind that keeps bouncing around your head long after you’ve read it, like a loose screw rattling around a subway car. So instead of letting it fester, I want to talk about it.
Let’s clear something up right out of the gate.
Nothing happens on a photoshoot. Not like that. Photoshoots aren’t sexy. They’re work. They’re lights and cables and someone asking you to stand right there no the other right. They’re too hot or too cold, with at least three extra people watching and one person about to trip over a tripod. The vibe is closer to hour ten on a film set than anything remotely romantic. So let’s kill that fantasy now. Nothing is going to happen.
And even if the opportunity magically appeared, no professional photographer I know would cross that line. Ever. That line isn’t blurry. It’s bright, obvious, and surrounded by common sense. You don’t step over it.
That said, I’ve heard real horror stories. Not internet rumors. Real people. People I know. Real experiences.
One model told me about a photographer she’d never met who wanted to shoot alone, deep in the woods. No assistants. No plan. Just trust me, which is never a sentence that should end there.
Another showed up for what she thought was a normal shoot and was suddenly asked to use adult toys on camera. No warning. No consent. Just that awful moment when you realize you’re in a situation you didn’t agree to.
Another was pressured into sex by a photographer who abused his position and her trust.
This should never happen. Not once. And while it’s true that when this kind of behavior comes to light, word spreads fast and those photographers get shut out of the community, that doesn’t undo the damage for the person who was put in harm’s way.
So here’s what actually matters.
Bring a safety buddy. Always. Any photographer who has a problem with that is not someone you should work with full stop. If you ask a photographer not to share an image, they should respect that without pushing back. If they argue, that’s your answer. If they post something and you ask for it to come down for any reason and they make a fuss, they’ve just disqualified themselves from future work with you.
Yes, bad photographers exist. Every industry has its share of them. But most photographers are good people who understand that trust is everything in this line of work, and boundaries are not optional.
Be careful. Ask questions. Ask for references. Talk to other models and clients. Ask how the experience actually felt, not just how the photos turned out.
Because at the end of the day, your safety and your comfort aren’t bonuses or perks. They’re the baseline. The bare minimum. The most important part of any photoshoot.
When there is safety, and trust, beautiful images and art can come from photoshoots. These images of Natalie were taken on just such a shoot, and I am grateful for the trust Natalie and I showed each other while working together.
Living Normally While Everything Is On Fire
I am going to be honest in a way that feels slightly rude to the morning. I do not want to be writing this. I do not want to be making something neat or meaningful or digestible. I woke up anxious, the kind of anxious that sits on your chest like a bad houseguest who refuses to leave and keeps asking unsettling questions.
Anxiety and I go way back. We were introduced early, practically childhood friends. When I was small, five or six, my nervous system decided that feelings were not enough and demanded a visual aid. I pulled my hair out. Not metaphorically. Literally. Enough of it that my parents eventually had to shave my head to hide the bald spots. That is not a poetic exaggeration. That is the level of fear my body carried before it had the language to explain itself.
I am telling you this so you understand that anxiety is not a new character in my story. It is not an unexpected twist. It is a recurring theme. I know its habits. I know how it knocks. Most days I treat it with a kind of tired compassion, like an old dog that growls at shadows because it once had good reason to. I earned this anxiety. I lived through things that taught me the world could turn sharp without warning. Some of those things were my fault. Many were not. My anxiety has always been fear doing its best impression of protection, whispering that pain can come back if you are not careful.
But lately something has shifted. The fear has picked up an edge. I am not angry at my anxiety. I am angry on its behalf.
Look around. The world is loud and unhinged and deeply unserious in the most dangerous way. Governments stumble through crises with all the grace of a drunk uncle at a wedding. People vanish. People die. Officials smile into cameras and tell us not to believe our own eyes even when there is video, even when there is proof, even when the truth is sitting right there asking to be acknowledged. It is fascinating in the way a burning building is fascinating. You cannot look away, and you know you should be running.
And still, we are expected to carry on. Pay the rent. Show up. Smile politely in meetings. Because if we do not, the consequences are immediate and brutal. Miss a payment and you are out. Miss enough and you are invisible. We all know how society treats people once they fall through the cracks. We are told to be grateful for the opportunity to work in offices that do not make us more productive, but do make spreadsheets happy and property values stable. We are told this is normal. We are told this is freedom.
It feels less like freedom and more like a very polished cage. Produce. Earn. Generate value. Not for yourself, but for the entity with a logo and a mission statement. Fail to comply and the floor disappears. Everyone knows this. We joke about it because joking is cheaper than revolt.
So yes, in the middle of all these operatic global disasters, I find myself deeply stressed about my job. The one that pays for cameras and plane tickets and long hours chasing light. The one that also feeds my family and keeps the heat on. The one that, if it vanished, would take a lot of safety with it. I am angry that survival is conditional. I am angry that work is mandatory even when the world feels like it is actively malfunctioning.
I am angry that housing is not a right. That food is not guaranteed. That warmth and electricity are treated like luxury add ons instead of basic human needs. I am angry that speech is filtered and throttled and sold back to us through platforms, institutions, algorithms, executives, and politicians who insist they are protecting us while tightening the rules. I am angry that we pretend this is normal and call it adulthood.
And here I am, writing posts on Patreon and my blog, wondering what any of this is for. A handful of people. A small corner of the internet where I share photographs and try to build something that feels like community. Some days it feels tender and important. Today it feels absurd. Like setting the table while the house is on fire.
It is hard not to conclude that we are not as free as we are told. That rights exist mostly on paper and disappear quickly when they become inconvenient. That we answer to governments, corporations, and belief systems that care very little about the actual beating heart of a human being.
I am sorry if this week feels heavy. It is heavy for me too. My anxiety is loud today. It is pacing the room, tapping on the windows, asking me what I plan to do about any of this.
And yet, despite everything, I remember the photographs. I remember standing in front of mountains that did not care about quarterly earnings. Sunsets that arrived without permission. Beaches, streets, faces, moments that existed whether anyone monetized them or not. A beautiful world, stubbornly beautiful, even under all this noise.
I hold on to that. I hold on to the hope that maybe within my lifetime we figure out a better way to live. A way that values people more than profit. A way that lets us rest without guilt. A way that does not require fear as an entry fee. Until then, I keep making images. Not because it fixes everything, but because it reminds me that something worth saving still exists.
Censored by a Machine
We’re nine days into 2026, and I already want to pull the emergency brake and ask who exactly is driving this thing. I’m not enjoying the state of the world. I’m angry, properly, bone-deep angry, and it feels like every headline is just another reminder that we’re stuck in a late-stage capitalism funhouse where the mirrors are warped, the exits are fake, and someone’s charging admission.
So much of what’s wrong feels depressingly obvious. Capitalism squeezing until nothing’s left. Politics turning every problem into a blood sport. Religion still showing up uninvited, like that one guy at a party who insists on explaining the meaning of life while blocking the snack table. We’re overworked, under-rested, constantly monitored, and told this is freedom. If this is freedom, the return policy is terrible.
And now capitalism’s newest shiny toy has arrived: AI. Not helpful AI, no, no, but AI bolted onto everything whether it belongs there or not. AI in your email. AI in your phone. AI in your car. AI making decisions that used to require a human being with a brain, a conscience, and at least a little hesitation. I don’t need AI reading my emails. I don’t want Google peeking into my texts or DMs like a nosy neighbor with binoculars. I don’t want AI flying planes or deciding what’s acceptable, true, or real.
What really sends me over the edge is how AI is being used to censor things without explanation or accountability. This morning, I posted a photo of Gabriel on social media. A real photo. One I took myself. On a Sony a7III. On Playalinda Beach in Florida, in the kind of heat that makes you question why humans ever left caves. I shot it. I edited it in Lightroom, color, white balance, a little vignette. That’s it. No AI. No prompts. No digital wizardry.
The platform removed it.
Why? Because an AI system “suspected the image was AI-generated.”
Let that sink in. A machine decided my photograph looked too real, or maybe too good, and erased it. Reality failed the vibe check. An algorithm shrugged and said, “Nah,” and that was that.
And of course, there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s no customer service. No human to talk to. No appeal that doesn’t lead straight back to another automated response. Customer service, as a concept, has basically been euthanized. Even when it technically exists, you’re funneled through endless menus, chatbots with fake empathy, and forms that disappear into the digital void. If you ever reach a person, they’ll apologize, transfer you, or accidentally-on-purpose disconnect.
This is not the future I was promised.
I was promised flying cars, shorter workweeks, and more time to make art, take photographs, and exist without being monitored like a suspicious package. I was promised a brighter, better future, not one where creativity is flagged as fraudulent and reality needs a verification badge.
I would very much like to return this timeline. I have the receipt. I have notes. I am willing to exchange it for literally any version that includes accountability, humanity, and maybe someone, anyone, answering the phone.
Unfortunately, there is no customer service department for reality.
And that, more than anything, might be the most dystopian part of all.