This will be the last post on Mardi Gras content, 2025.
I just can’t help it. It’s crazy how a single event, shortened by rain and winds, could stir up so much fucking shit in me.
I’m not surprised.
I resisted going to Mardi Gras this year. Now I know why. Ghosts and demons awaited me on Bourbon Street. All good.
Mardi Gras is a time of masks, both literal and figurative. It’s a swirl of color, noise, and revelry where strangers become fast friends, if only for a fleeting moment. In the middle of all that, a woman—early 50s, well-groomed, connective, maybe a bit tipsy, her hands warm and familiar—touched my arm and asked me something simple but profound:
“You look so cool. Mind if I ask what you’re doing and what your story is?”
Hell yes!
I answered without hesitation. I told her I was a photographer, here to capture the people, the spirit, the electric charge of the streets for a new book and online course. She nodded, smiled, and we hugged, tightly and warmly, before parting ways.
But her question didn’t leave me. It stayed, bouncing around my head the rest of the day.
“What’s your story?”
It’s an easy question to answer at the surface level. My story is that I’m a photographer. I’ve been at this for decades. I’ve shot everything from commercial work to fine art, from analog to digital, from DSLR to iPhone. My work has taken me around the world, and now, my passion is using mobile photography to teach, inspire, and challenge the way we see.
That’s the outer story.
It’s the one I tell when people ask. It’s what the world sees—what’s easily digestible, clean, and structured.
But the truth is, we all have two stories. The one we tell and the one we carry. The one that fits neatly into a sentence or two and the one that lives deep inside us, layered with nuance, complexity, and contradiction.
My inner story is far less polished and far less complete.
It’s made up of quiet thoughts and emotions that never fully make their way to the surface. It’s where my real work happens—not with a camera in my hand, but in the spaces between the clicks of the shutter. It’s a constant dialogue, a wrestling match between nostalgia and ambition, between certainty and doubt, confidence and insecurity, It’s my bullet train of thoughts about family, intimacy, theology, philosophy, and humanity—thoughts that move too fast for words but shape everything I do.
My interiority is where my wounds, scars, failures, and insecurities live. It’s where I process the loss of time, the evolution of relationships, the weight of regrets, and the chase for meaning. But it’s also where my deepest joys reside—where love, curiosity, and wonder take root.
I think we all live this way.
We exist in a constant duality, an interplay between the self we show and the self we shelter. We meet people, exchange pleasantries, and share the rehearsed version of our lives. We talk about our work, our families, our projects. But inside, there’s another story unfolding—one we rarely give voice to, even to ourselves.
Maybe that’s why photography has always felt like home to me-real home, unconditional love home.
A photograph is, in many ways, a negotiation between these two worlds. A portrait captures the outer story—the face, the pose, the expression that someone chooses to offer. But if done well, it hints at the inner world, too. A flicker in the eyes, a tension in the hands, a moment of hesitation. The camera may only see the surface, but great photography invites us to feel beyond it.
That’s what I’ve always chased—not just images, but the essence beneath them.
So, if I were to answer that woman again, now with the weight of her question fully settled in my bones, I’d say this:
“My outer story is simple: I take photos. My inner story is vast: I take photos to make sense of the world, to preserve its fleeting wonders, and to remind myself, over and over, that life is both messy and magnificent, and worth capturing in all its forms.”
Maybe that’s all any of us are really trying to do—find a way to bridge the gap between our outer and inner selves. To tell the whole story, even when it can’t be put into words.
Click.
Jack.
