There is something strange going on with me in my photographic life.
I’m not really sure what exactly it is.
The best I can do is describe it.
It feels like unmooring. Letting go of the cleat. Releasing the dock lines.
I feel happily adrift.
Not lost.
Not in crisis.
But adrift in the best way possible—like I’ve hoisted sail on a wind I finally trust again.
A return current. A homeward tide.
I’m coming full circle, slowly, surely, back to why I picked up a camera in the first place.
To express myself.
To connect with what I saw.
To make art.
Not product. Not content. Not deliverables.
Art.
That’s how it started for me.
But between then and now?
Let’s be honest.
There were a lot of stormy seas.
And waves.
And high tides to manage.
Client briefs.
Agency decks.
Storyboards.
Mood boards.
Shot lists.
RFPs.
NDAs.
Budgets.
Billing schedules.
Revisions.
Reshoots.
Creative directors with too much power and too little vision.
Account execs who never picked up a camera but knew better.
Clients who didn’t know what they wanted until they saw what they didn’t.
Thirty years of dancing that same commercial two-step.
That was my professional life.
And I was good at it.
No, I was great at it.
I shot global campaigns for multi-million-dollar brands.
I worked in 50 countries, six continents, three+ decades.
Editorial. Corporate. Advertising. Stock.
Resorts. Hotels., Cruiselines. Airlines. Destination Bureau’s. Travel Campaigns
My photos. direct and through agencies, graced ads, billboards, packaging, annual reports, banners, buses, brochures, back covers, inside covers, and coffee-table books.
I cashed the checks.
I played the game.
I did the damn thing.
But here’s the thing I never said out loud, until now:
Most of what I shot felt like nothing.
Glossy nothing.
Expensive nothing.
Beautifully lit nothing.
Pixel-perfect, triple-approved nothing.
And don’t get me wrong—I’m proud of the work.
But if you ask me what it meant?
Not much.
It didn’t come from me.
It came from the brief.
It came from the contract.
It came from someone else’s vision, someone else’s problem to solve.
I was a hired gun. A visual mercenary. A technician with taste.
That’s the gig.
But somewhere deep in that visual noise, I lost a bit of my own voice.
And now, after all these years…
I’m beginning to hear it again.
Thanks to a little device that fits in my pocket.
My iPhone.
It gave me permission to begin again.
To wander again.
To not know what I’m looking for and go looking anyway.
No crew.
No assistant.
No C-stands.
No strobes.
No retouching budget.
No client expectations.
Just me.
And the light.
And the day.
And the moment.
And what I point my camera at, now?
To most, it probably feels like nothing.
Cracks in the pavement.
A plastic lawn chair.
The way light hits a trailer window at dusk.
A faded sign on a small-town storefront.
Empty booths in a breakfast diner.
Discarded gloves on the curb.
A pickup truck with a story.
To many, these aren’t even worth stopping for.
But for me?
For me, nothing is everything.
This shift has been slow, then sudden.
It didn’t happen overnight.
But I feel it now, in every frame.
I’m shooting for myself, again.
And finally, for the wall—not the wallet.
My camera roll is full of moments that don’t ask for attention.
They whisper instead of shout.
They wait instead of wave.
They are humble, soft, quiet, and real.
I’m not chasing drama anymore.
I’m not interested in spectacle.
I’m not in search of wow.
I’m in search of why.
Why this corner?
Why this shadow?
Why does this scene make me stop?
Why does it feel familiar, even though I’ve never seen it before?
And what I’m discovering is that photography, at its best, is less about finding something “special” and more about noticing what’s already there.
That’s what this new season of shooting has taught me.
That’s what the iPhone—simple, small, stripped-down—has returned to me.
Presence.
Permission.
Poetry.
You can call it the mundane.
The ordinary.
The vernacular.
The everyday.
But don’t confuse “everyday” with dull.
Don’t confuse “simple” with shallow.
These moments hold more mystery than most monuments.
There’s deep magic here.
These are not throwaway scenes.
These are thresholds—tiny portals into seeing, into being.
And I believe the camera, especially the iPhone camera, is the perfect tool for them.
Not because it’s technically superior.
Not because it has all the bells and whistles.
But because it’s always with me.
And it never gets in the way.
It’s transparent.
It’s obedient.
It’s a translator of attention.
And that, more than anything, is what I’m chasing: attention.
Not attention for me.
But attention from me.
Giving the world my full attention.
Stopping long enough to see what I used to overlook.
Shooting with heart, not just habit.
Because here’s the truth I’ve come to believe:
If you can learn to photograph “nothing,”
you can learn to find meaning anywhere.
If you can fall in love with the overlooked,
you’ll never run out of things to see.
If you can capture the invisible,
you’ll never take another meaningless shot again.
That’s the heart of it.
That’s the quiet revolution I’m in.
And it brings me joy.
A deep, private, sustainable joy.
Not the performance kind. Not the applause kind.
The wholeness kind.
I’m not on assignment anymore.
I’m not working the gig.
I’m not solving someone else’s problem.
I’m simply responding.
To light.
To place.
To feeling.
To memory.
To the world as it is.
And to the world as I alone see it.
So go ahead.
Scroll through my feed.
Look through my latest work.
You might not “get it.”
You might scroll past and wonder what the big deal is.
You might think it’s just nothing.
And maybe it is.
But to me, for a couple hours on Friday, and a couple more on Saturday?
Nothing is Everything.
Click.
Jack
