I grew up in a home where art was a foreign language—one we never learned to speak.
Artists? They were the weird ones. Floaty. Flaky. Odd. Dangerous even. You know the type—long hair, flowy pants, saying things like “energy” and “expression” as if that was normal. That wasn’t us. We were a sports family. Period.
We were balls, bats, cleats, and trophies.
We were touchdowns, free throws, pop flies, and slam dunks.
We were Saturday afternoon gridiron and Sunday afternoon Pro Sports on TV or gym time at RMHS (my dad had the keys:))
No museums. No plays. No musicals. No ballet. No orchestras. No poetry nights. No sketchbooks or symphonies or interpretive anything.
We didn’t paint. We didn’t draw. We didn’t sculpt or sing.
We played hard. We won or we lost. And we moved on.
So yeah, it’s a little strange—even to me—that I turned out the way I did.
I’m one of the weird ones now.
An artist. A photographer. A visual storyteller.
The kid who once feared being misunderstood became the adult who intentionally lives in the misunderstood margins.
Kind of a James Dean meets Camera Roll.
It didn’t happen overnight. Truth is, it took a hell of a long time to be comfortable in this artist skin. It was itchy at first. It didn’t fit. I fidgeted with it. Tried to hide it under khakis and logic and hustle. I thought art was for other people—freer people, softer people, people raised in the embrace of creativity.
Not people like me.
But art kept showing up anyway.
It started small. A sunset I couldn’t look away from. A crack in the pavement that looked like a map. The way a shadow leaned across the floor like it was trying to tell me something. Something about time. Or light. Or longing.
And slowly—without even realizing it—I began to see.
Learning photography, for me, was never just about shutter speeds or framing rules. It was about allowing myself to be someone new. Someone who didn’t need to win. Someone who didn’t need to explain. Someone who could just see and feel.
When you’re just starting out in photography, you don’t need to be good.
You need to be aware.
You need to train your eyes to notice the things you used to pass by.
Light bouncing off a car windshield.
Color wrapped around a rusted doorway.
The symmetry of window blinds.
The chaos of tangled tree branches.
The design of everyday life hiding in plain sight.
You don’t photograph what’s in front of you. You photograph what’s inside of you, reflected in what you notice.
Learning to shoot is learning to feel.
And once that switch is flipped, you see the world differently.
The design of a coffee cup suddenly matters. The angle of late afternoon sun pouring into your living room becomes cinematic. You’re no longer just in the world. You’re in constant conversation with it. Everything becomes potential. Everything becomes a shot waiting to be taken.
And weirdly, beautifully, you stop apologizing for what moves you.
Sometimes I think about my parents. I think about how they might react if they could see me now.
Me, standing in the middle of a field, iPhone out, chasing clouds.
Or me, lying on a hotel floor to get the perfect shot of light on a table leg.
Me, tearing up over a photograph that no one else thinks twice about.
Or me, lecturing passionately about negative space and color harmony to a room full of strangers.
They’d probably laugh. Or shake their heads. Or say, “Where the hell did that come from?”
But maybe—just maybe—they’d also feel a little proud.
Because even though I took a strange road to get here, I finally found a place where I belong. A place where weird is wonderful. A place where sensitivity is strength. A place where photography isn’t just what I do—it’s who I am.
And that’s the thing about becoming an artist later in life:
You don’t just learn to see the world—you learn to see yourself.
So yeah…
If my parents could see me now?
They might not understand it. But they’d know I found something real.
And maybe—just maybe—they’d say:
“Well damn. That’s our weird kid.”
And I’d smile, shrug, and whisper back,
“Took me long enough.”
Click.
Jack.
