As we were driving through the city a few nights ago I said "I feel lonely in this city. It's cold and unwelcoming and I don't have any ties or connections here." And it's true, I feel displaced in Denver, a fact I keep hoping will change in time.
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"Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence." —The Little Prince
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This chick is so fun to work with especially when I'm saying things like "Dammit, Angela, you can't do anything right!" and "I don't wanna see your face in these pictures again! You're ruining everything!"
Read MorePost-Civilization /
“It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then...and then -- ah -- we open our eyes and the day is before us and ... we become ourselves.”—Jerry Spinelli
Read MoreLiving Lives That Matter /
“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away."
Read MoreWeathering the Storm /
Originally, this video was going to be about me and the adversity I’ve withstood and how it’s completely changed me (mostly for the better) and how fortunate I feel to have endured it, to have transformed because of it, to have a greater appreciation for the moments of smooth sailing when I wasn’t weathering the storm.
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I couldn't find your mouth in the darkness
or your waist to put my arms around at midnight
and I can't know what it's like to be a man like you
loving the woman clenching her fists until daylight
Suicide is War /
Suicide is war. And perhaps not with a foreign or nameless enemy but with oneself. It’s an internal struggle of incomparable breadth. You lose enough battles and you lose the war. Bloodshed abounds. My father was at war with himself for years, if not decades and ultimately, he lost but it was something he could not heave himself out of or walk peacefully away from, waving a white flag. He was slated to fight until the day he died. That was his fate and he handled it as gracefully as he knew how. I have never blamed him for leaving. As quickly as I learned he had died I had forgiven him. Leaving early and on his terms was a non-negotiable clause in the fine print of his life. Somewhere, deep down in the pit of my gut I had always known it.
Read MoreHow do I interpret life’s challenges? /
My father felt a pull away from this anguishing life to the battlefield and conclusively to someplace better and with trustfully less heartache. This goal became his duty and obligation and it was the only way he knew how to move forward. And I have suffered heavily, myself, as a result of this but I no longer hear the Why Me? record skipping in the back of my mind because on December 17th, 1998 I gained something valuable that many people never do: Boundless gratitude for my much deeper capacity for joy. It would only take nearly half my lifetime without him to realize it.
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Artists are some of the most hard-working and loving people I know, conquering the daily grind but guarding their heart enough to piecemeal their art. It's a balancing act of colossal fortitude and it isn't easy.
Read MoreHow do I discover and apply my gifts? /
I see beauty in ugly places and ugly in beautiful places. I see the abstract artful formations that a random assortment of words on a page can make and I can feel those words. I see light in dark and history in skin. I see the good and tenderness in people and I’m sensitive to the dishonest, black-hearted and manipulative (and do what I can to maintain a life without them). And I try so hard to depict these things that I see through the lens of a camera and through writing and yet I realize as humans, we all see things a little differently than anyone else, and through our own lens. That’s the incredible thing about art; whatever I create, it changes depending on the particular observer. I think that if I’m truly lucky enough to count these as gifts I can say without flinching that they’re all rooted in consciousness, in emotion and passion and an absolute awareness that we’re all delicate feeling beings.
Read MoreLove Never Fails /
I love shooting two people in love. I love catching all of the little moments in between the planned and posed and easy smiling shots; the more intimate, real and honest seconds that seemingly freeze and last for little eternities, and when you think and hope and pray that perhaps they forgot there's a camera there with a person behind it capturing these small instances before they slip away.
Read MoreLiberation and The Normal Wood Creates the Sea /
I've been wanting to shoot this woman naked for years. To quickly capture just a glimpse and solidify her beautiful art-plastered body in photographs for infinitude. Shanna's my tattoo artist and one hell of a chick and I've photographed her before but never was there such tenaciousness in the air.
Read MoreTo whom should I listen? /
WSMR is also home to Trinity Site, the location of the world’s first atomic explosion on July 16, 1945 - more specifically happening near the north end of the historic Jornada del Muerto which in English means “route of the dead man” which is quite appropriate, don’t you think? And what does it say about me that there’s something about that fact that I strongly relate to or identify with? I am a child of the nuclear age and I came to be at the heart of it all. I wear a pin on my camera strap with an image of an atom bomb explosion that says “Homesick” beneath it. I find myself somewhere in that morbid absurdity of the land I came up in.
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And I wanna sit outside in the dark except for the light of the distant moon with you and marvel at the perfectly ludicrous idea that men have traveled that far from home. We're both far from home and yet here we are - contently home.
Read MoreEver-Changing /
" I am a woman, an American, an Australian, an introvert, an animal advocate, passionate soul, a loyal friend, a giver, a writer, a wife, an ex-wife, a girlfriend, a dweller, a small-towner-living-in-a-big-city, a fish out of water, an artist, an ex-self-mutilator, an empathy-filled spirit for all suffering beings, a photographer, a granddaughter, a gardener, a creator, a destroyer, an observer, a seeker, a lover, a grudge-holder, a forgiver, a re-inventor, a decorator, a reader, an appreciator of all beautiful things, a regretter, a graphic designer, a survivor, an ever-evolving human being. I am resilient. I am called to identify with countless labels and descriptors. I am called to try my hand at numerous undertakings."
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I am my mother and father's only child and thus I am inherently the sole creation and survivor of their violent and combustible union. I am the only witness and I am the lonely product of a regrettable amalgamation.
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I can't look at the sky and not think of you. I can't look at each and every single drop, every reflection of your eyes in the mirrors of the falling rain. I can't not think of you when the smells of the wet earth conquer my body like an invading army at the battle of I Love You More Than love.
Read MoreThat Very Redemption /
"Maybe the primary and most rational reasons we’ve found such contentment in each other is because, once finally emancipated from past strife and having gained the necessary perspective, we needed that very redemption to do so."
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"Come with every wound and every woman you’ve ever loved; every lie you’ve ever told and whatever it is that keeps you up at night. Every mouth you’ve punched in, all the blood you’ve ever tasted. Come with every enemy you’ve ever made and all the family you’ve ever buried and every dirty thing you’ve ever done; every drink that’s burnt your throat and every morning you’ve woken with nothing and no one. Come with all your loss, your regrets, sins, memories, black outs, secrets. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than you." —Warsan Shire
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