Change.
“You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone” – Roy T. Bennett
This is not the first time in my life that I’m reflecting on this quote. I heard it years ago when I was in college and training to go into the military. When I first heard it, to me it meant stepping out of my physical comfort zone and entering a pain cave where I would happily live for hours as I trained in the gym and the pool. Now I’m interpreting and appreciating it in a different way; a way that is relevant to my life as an outdoorsman and a photographer.
In the last five years or so, I’ve shot tens of thousands of photos in beautiful places all around the continental United States. Hundreds of those photos have been posted to social media in the hope that I can share, through art, stories from my adventures with people who appreciate seeing faraway, beautiful places. There has always been something missing from this idea. Recently, I’ve realized that Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and social media in general (minus YouTube long format video) are terrible platforms for creators to tell stories on. The “fast entertainment” these platforms provide, encourages users to scroll quickly from image to image, reel to reel, and video to video seeking a dopamine hit from short term pleasure. This is not a format conducive to people comprehending and remembering stories and, frankly, I don’t believe it’s a great way to pass stories along either.
In addition to creating short dopamine rushes, I believe that social media ruins people’s appreciation of art. Afterall, how can you really appreciate something if you’re just mindlessly scrolling through 50 images at a time and not taking the time to take in what is there? As creators, we get a tingle when people talk with us about our work and appreciate it for the effort and skill that went into crafting it. When was the last time you commented something of more substance than “Wow!” or “This is incredible!” on a post? When was the last time you engaged with an artist with more than a “Like”? I too have been guilty of this, it’s easy to quickly and shallowly move through content on these platforms. Recently I’ve been trying to engage more often and more deeply with the creators who inspire me. I challenge you to do the same: Step out of your comfort zone and reach out. I promise, we all enjoy hearing from you in regard to our work.
One reason I don’t believe social media is a good story telling platform is its inherently limited duration. My favorite way to create photographs in the summer is backpacking because I get to spend an enormous amount of quality time outdoors, hiking, observing and capturing images of the vast landscapes I trek through for recreation. These adventures typically last anywhere from two to ten days and they are not things that I can condense into short posts and single images. This leads me to call out what I have failed to share historically: the adventure that goes into nearly every photo I post.
To address this inadequacy, I am taking action to make my story telling process more fulfilling for myself and engaging for you. I am creating a website where I intend to share blog posts (yes, those things that we thought died in the mid 2000s) that contain the stories of my art as well as the high quality, large format imagery itself! You have no idea how excited I am to be able to write down the stories of my adventures, craft pictures of them, and share them in a high definition, verbose, media format with you!
The first adventure post for my blog should be coming in the next couple of weeks and it will describe hiking the (in)famous Cirque of the Towers loop in Wyoming!
If you’re still here, THANK YOU for taking the time to come this far! I hope you got something out of my writing, and I hope to hear any thoughts you might have about what you’ve read here.