I’ll begin this little story about me by asking you a question.

Are their moments in your life when all the noise stops, when the only thing that matters is right now?

I sure hope so.

I’d like to share one of mine as you ponder yours.

I have appreciated the jobs of my youth; farming tobacco, potatoes, Christmas trees; working for mom and dad as a stock boy and cashier; delivering furniture. As fun and as functional as these jobs were, my mind wandered while doing them.

As it still would if I were doing these jobs today.

Since college though, I’ve made my living with a camera. Plastic cameras, film cameras, underwater cameras, drones, digital cameras, timelapse rigs, camera systems so big and heavy they need a truck to support them.

Work has taken me around the world, to all seven contenients. It’s taken me to backyards two doors away. It has taken me to places I never thought I would go and helped me see things I never thought I would see.

When something is happening in front of the camera that I can’t explain because it’s so beautiful or tragic or surprising, there is a change in me.

My mind settles into the present.

The noise stops.

No wondering what’s for supper or where my sunglasses are.

No wandering mind.

I cherish these moments. They are one of my relationships with work that I didn’t count on when I was a kid thinking about so many other things to get through a day of work. They are everlasting though, even in mystery.

I do know that relationships take more than one.

I can’t speak for the people or the places in these images. I can say thank you. I can say that I hope you see your dignity in the moment and that you feel seen in sharing your story.

If I dig deeper behind my connection to the camera and the relationships I have made because of work, what motivates me most is an opportunity to communicate a feeling through images. Not to tell someone what or how to think but to provide an opportunity for others to feel an emotion.

I have come to understand that my own emotional bonds grow stronger because of these moments. Not only in work but in life. Work has taught me that these moments are fleeting and we should race to catch them. Life has taught me that such moments can be cultivated but not manufactured.

I have come to believe that these moments are the best parts of us, when the noise stops and our heart beats with the moment we are in.