The other day, I was on my daily bike ride around Lady Bird Lake in Austin. It’s one of my most cherished rituals—an hour or two on two wheels, circling the water, letting my body work and my mind wander. Exercise, therapy, and meditation rolled into one.
As I was crossing the Lamar pedestrian bridge, my phone rang. Normally, I ignore calls when I’m mid-ride, but something told me to pick up this one. So I slowed down, pulled to the side, and parked myself on a bench to take it.
And here’s where serendipity stepped in.
A woman was already sitting there—late forties maybe, lovely in the way someone is when their face carries both beauty and story. Way out of my league, if I’m being honest. Definitely punching above my weight even just sitting next to her. She had a presence, the kind of quiet confidence that only comes from having lived a little, maybe loved and lost a little too.
When I hung up my call, I noticed her expression—reflective, maybe even a little sad. So I did something I don’t always do with strangers: I asked. “You okay?”
She smiled faintly and said, “Yes, I just saw something that reminded me of my childhood in Chicago.”
She was holding a compact digital camera in her hands, and naturally that became our bridge. Fifteen minutes passed in a blink as we talked about photography, memory, and that invisible line where life crosses into art. We swapped stories: hers about growing up in Chicago, mine about years of traveling and shooting, and how cameras have always been my companions.
Click.
It was one of those small encounters that stays with you—not because it was dramatic, but because it was human.
As I got back on my bike and continued the ride, my mind wouldn’t let go of the conversation. I found myself reflecting on the long winding road of my own life: the experiences I’ve had, the pain I’ve endured, the joys I’ve celebrated. And I realized once again—these aren’t just the events that shaped the adult I am. They’re the very same events that shaped the artist I am.
That’s the intersection. Life and art. They don’t just brush against each other—they overlap, interlock, become inseparable.
I’ve come to believe art never exists in a vacuum. You can try to pull it out, analyze it, hang it on a sterile white wall—but the truth is, it always comes from somewhere. It carries fingerprints of its maker’s story. Every photograph I’ve ever made—whether of a stranger in Havana, a sunset in West Texas, or a still life on my kitchen table—is, in some hidden way, about me. My choices. My eyes. My heart.
I didn’t always know this.
In my early years as a photographer, back when I was shooting commercially, I sometimes treated photography like a job description. Point. Shoot. Deliver. There was a checklist, and I checked it. Clients were happy. But often, I felt something missing. The pictures were sharp. The light was good. The composition held. But they didn’t always sing.
Why? Because I was trying to make art without letting life bleed into it.
Over time, life taught me differently. The failures. The heartbreaks. The unexpected turns. The long nights questioning purpose. The mornings filled with gratitude I couldn’t explain. All of it crept into my work, sometimes without me knowing it. The colors I reached for, the shadows I chased, the faces I was drawn to—they were mirrors of my own journey.
That’s when I began to see it clearly: when you learn to connect with life—really connect, not skim across it—the art part becomes infinitely more remarkable.
Think about it.
A photograph of an old man on a street corner is just an image. But if you’ve ever sat with your own aging father, felt the fragility of time pressing in, then suddenly that photograph isn’t just about him—it’s about all fathers, about loss, about love, about you.
A shot of children running through sprinklers isn’t just summer nostalgia—it’s a reminder of innocence, of the child you once were, and maybe the children you raised or never had.
A landscape of a desert canyon isn’t just geology—it’s about solitude, about silence, about standing small in front of something timeless.
Life fills the frame. Without it, art is hollow. With it, art becomes alive.
I think that’s why I’m still so obsessed with photography after all these years. It’s not just about cameras and megapixels and lenses—though Lord knows I can geek out on that too. It’s about bearing witness to life as it happens, knowing that the photograph is just a vessel. What it holds is experience.
When I look back over my own catalogue, my camera roll is less an archive of pictures and more a map of memory. Every image is tied to a moment, a feeling, a version of myself. Some remind me of who I was. Others remind me of who I never want to be again. A few whisper who I might still become.
And maybe that’s why I think art matters so deeply—not because it’s pretty, not because it’s collectible, but because it’s personal. It’s a way of saying: I was here. This mattered. I saw this. I felt this.
I keep circling back to that woman on the bench.
Her memory of Chicago. Her small smile as she recalled it. Her compact camera in her hand, waiting to catch something fleeting. She didn’t know me, I didn’t know her. Yet for fifteen minutes, our lives touched. Life brushed up against art, and in the space between, something meaningful happened.
I may never see her again. But I’ll remember her. And maybe she’ll remember the guy on the bike who paused long enough to ask, “You okay?”
That, to me, is art at its purest: not a framed print, not a published book, but a lived connection. A reminder that our humanity isn’t abstract—it’s observable, feelable, sharable.
As I finished my ride that day, the sun was setting, spilling fire across the lake. I pulled out my own phone to take a picture, but this time it felt different. I wasn’t just documenting a view. I was documenting a moment—a day when life tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, Don’t forget this.
So I clicked.
Life. Art. One frame.
Click.
Jack.
