Not just lust in a sexual sense, but all of the physical sensations and pleasure-seeking things that we do on a day-to-day basis—whether it’s the hits of dopamine from watching media, the yummy food that we consume, the validation we receive, or the striving for material success. It’s definitely normal, and not a bad thing, to engage your senses and seek pleasure. But once you don’t necessarily need it, then what?
Today I want to talk about finding joy through street photography and why I believe that the simplest way to frame our practice is around happiness.
Photography is such a simple thing. You go out, you walk, you observe, you photograph. You don’t need to worry about the outcome of the photograph. You don’t need to be caught up with the past, the future, the photos you made yesterday, or what you’ll do tomorrow.
Photography grounds you in the present moment — the eternal now. And to me, that’s bliss.
There’s this joy and happiness that flows through me when I’m on the streets. Simply being out there. Being grateful for life itself. And I find that when you detach entirely from photography as something performative — something about impact, results, or an audience — you start to cultivate this deep inner sense of peace and joy.
That joy fills me with energy. It makes photography inevitable. The flow state becomes effortless.
Photography is really not that serious.
And you don’t need to take it so seriously. You don’t need to be serious as a human being either. You can go out there and play. Experiment. Fail. Get back up. Make more photographs.
Through that, you cultivate this feeling I’m describing — this endless sense of possibility with life itself. Photography reminds me of that.
Photography as Presence
I think there’s a misconception that photographers are disconnected or not in the present. I believe the opposite is true.
Photography puts you even deeper into the moment. You become hyper-aware of the sights, the sounds, the smells of the street. You’re having a very deep experience of life itself.
And I think it’s important for humans to find their purpose. You can’t really force it. There’s something innate within each of us that we’re meant to follow.
Photography is that thing for me. Maybe it is for you too.
Once you recognize that, curiosity becomes your internal compass. Photography stops being something you do — it becomes a way of life. A way of being.
But it’s also a way of becoming. Of evolving. Transforming. Growing.
The goal isn’t found in the outcome of the photograph. It’s found in the process of self-evaluation. In discovering who you are.
When you discover who you are, life becomes effortless. Even the mundane stops being what it seems.
Walking, Hunting, Becoming
We look at life in such a linear way that everything becomes boring and banal. Photography breaks that.
It cultivates novelty through perception. Through how you look at the world with a camera. And as you make photographs, you discover things — not just about the world, but about yourself.
Photography lives on the fine line between being and becoming. Order and chaos. Internal and external.
There’s something deeply physical about it too. Walking. Moving. Firing your hormones. Feeling your body alive.
We’re bipedal beings. Designed to move. To walk. To observe.
There’s a primal experience in photography that reminds me of hunting. Going out. Looking. Searching. Bringing something back home. Culling the images. There’s joy in that.
It feels innate. Natural. Human.
Curiosity Over Thinking
I don’t think about photography as something serious. I don’t really think at all.
Thinking is for idiots. Doing is where motivation lives.
The goal is to wake up with enthusiasm for the day. To open your eyes wide. To wonder why.
Every click of the shutter is a question. Curiosity leads you to yourself. Your personality reflects in what you create.
This requires emptiness. Walking without expectations. No destination. No preconceived notions.
Photography is endless. There’s always more to discover.
When you photograph from this detached state — where the goal is the process itself — making photographs becomes meditation.
Being here. Right now. Clicking the shutter.
That presence is one of the most peak human experiences you can have.
Photography as Life Affirmation
Photography has nothing to do with photography.
It has everything to do with the bodily experience of being alive. On the front lines of life. Close to humanity. Close to strangers. Rivers. Mountains. Cities. New terrain.
All of it flows through you when you practice consistently.
So don’t dwell on the photos you made yesterday. Let your next photograph be your best photograph.
Enter the stream of becoming. Return to day one. Every day.
Don’t let the camera on your neck or the project in your head weigh you down.
Photography, in its purest form, is an act of life affirmation and gratitude.
For me, the camera is a compass. It gives me purpose. It reminds me to never miss another sunrise.
To return to childlike joy. Wonder. Enthusiasm.
From that state, photography becomes effortless. And flow is inevitable.
The way light casts itself upon surfaces, people, places, and things is always in flux. It’s always changing. The seasons are changing. The trees are growing. On a biological level, you are consistently replenishing cells.
There is so much novelty in the world.
And I think the mundane isn’t necessarily what it seems.
When you raise the camera to your eye and photograph things, life can become a dream.
Do you thrive in the monotony? Do you thrive in the internal loop of waking up each day?
I personally do.
Thriving in the Loop
I thrive by embracing the day. By embracing the spirit of play through the medium of photography.
Photography allows me to find infinite possibility and novelty in the mundane nature of life. Not by chasing something extraordinary, but by recognizing something simple and fundamental:
I cannot make the same photograph twice.
Infinite Novelty in Everyday Life
Light changes. People change. Places change. You change.
Even when you walk the same streets. Even when you wake up to the same routine. Even when nothing “new” seems to be happening.
The novelty is already there.
Photography becomes a way of seeing. A way of engaging. A way of being present with what’s right in front of you.
And when you meet life from that place, the mundane opens up.
Today I want to talk about change in street photography and why transformation fuels me with joy in my practice.
What I’ve found is this: when I’m out there photographing, if I adopt one very simple mantra — my next photograph is my best photograph — photography becomes inevitable. The flow state becomes effortless.
Photography stops feeling forced. It becomes intuitive. Instinctual.
By removing control — removing this idea of me as the photographer — and embracing flow, embracing everyday life as it unfolds in front of me, I enter a space of transformation and change.
Learning the Game — and Moving Beyond It
Once you learn the game of photography — how to position your body, how subjects interact with backgrounds, when your instinct tells you to click the shutter — you can synthesize content and form into photographs that are visually and emotionally impactful.
But here’s the danger.
You can become too comfortable.
And comfort leads to stagnation.
My goal is to stay in a perpetual state of movement, motivation, and creation. By removing the goal of making “great photos” and entering the stream of becoming, I’m endlessly transforming every single day.
And that transformation is what fuels joy.
Joy is found when you create something new. Joy is found when you let go of the old. Sometimes destruction is the doorway to creation.
Returning to Day One
Once you understand photography, you can only go so far with technique alone. Learning the visual game matters — but going beyond photography is where things get interesting.
For me, going beyond photography looks like tapping into my personality, discovering myself as much as I’m discovering the world.
The photographs I make now come from an instinctual state. I’m actively trying to forget what I think I know about photography — and even about life.
I want to wake up every day from a blank slate.
Returning to day one is where I find the most joy. That’s where play lives. That’s where childlike curiosity exists.
When curiosity is infinite, photography becomes effortless.
Because once you think you’ve seen it all — photographed it all — you hit a wall.
And that wall is easy to break through.
Play Over Performance
You break through by removing the unnecessary burden of being a serious photographer. You take off the visual storyteller costume. You stop trying to make something important.
You return to play.
When you do that, you enter a space of endless transformation — no peak, no finish line, no final goal.
The goal becomes the process itself. Curiosity. Movement. Exploration.
That detached state — where I’m no longer striving to make my next best photograph — is what makes this period of change so joyful.
Effortless Photography Comes From Joy
When you photograph the same way for too long, comfort sets in. But when you try new ways to play the game, joy becomes inevitable.
And joy puts me into flow.
Flow makes photography effortless.
That’s why I never want to leave the stream of becoming. I want to constantly evolve — because evolution is the most beautiful state to be in as a photographer.
Meaning is found in the practice. In the process. In showing up.
Practical Ways I Enter Flow
A few simple things help me stay there:
I always carry a camera
I simplify my workflow
I use automatic settings
I remove technical friction
All of this lets me operate from instinct and intuition.
Photography becomes the art of noticing — not just what I see, but what I feel.
That’s what reveals your voice.
Every Day Is Day One
This period of change has brought me so much joy because every day feels like day one again.
Infinite opportunity. More to see. More to feel. More to explore.
That’s why I love photography.
It lets me constantly transform, reevaluate, and evolve — waking up each morning like a kid going out to play.
Today I want to talk about why I choose black and white for my street photography.
For the past three years, I’ve been entering this period of change with my practice by photographing in black and white. On a technical level, I’m using the Ricoh GR III or the Ricoh GR IIIx with a high-contrast black and white JPEG profile cranked all the way up. All the shadows, all the detail — it’s baked directly into the file. I don’t post-process the images you see.
That technical choice is intentional. I’m setting up my camera in a way that doesn’t get in the way, so I can enter the flow state more easily. That’s the number one reason I transformed my process from color to black and white. Everything feels simplified and streamlined. Photography becomes effortless. The flow state feels inevitable.
And that’s where I believe a photographer needs to be.
In the streets, walking endlessly.
Because what is a photographer’s goal, really, other than to walk, explore, wander, and cultivate curiosity?
By stripping away the complexity of color and returning to black and white, photography has integrated seamlessly into my everyday life. There’s something about this shift that’s allowing me to find more joy in the practice, generally.
Abstraction, the Sublime, and Seeing Differently
What I appreciate most about black and white photography is how it allows me to abstract reality.
When I’m on the streets, I don’t experience life linearly. I often feel this sense of the sublime — that disbelief that we’re on a giant rock orbiting a ball of fire, held together by what feels like duct tape, falling endlessly through space.
That emotional quality of life is more easily evoked through black and white. By removing color, honing in on negative space, and pushing contrast to the maximum, I’m able to translate that internal feeling into the photograph.
Life isn’t always what it seems. Life can become a dream when you raise the camera to your eye and look more closely.
These days, I’m not trying to make photographs of what life is. I’m trying to make photographs of what life could be — my own interpretation of reality.
That’s why I love black and white. It allows me to take something extremely ordinary and lift it into something extraordinary.
Imperfection, Play, and Flow
The photographs in this collection aren’t perfect. Sometimes there are mistakes. Sometimes there’s a roughness to them.
But those imperfections become the perfection.
Black and white photography lets me work loosely. I’m not trying to control everything. I let the chips fall where they may. I embrace play.
That playfulness puts me in a state of becoming — a place where I never want to feel like I’ve found the one image I’ll make for the rest of my life. By returning to black and white, there’s always more to see, more to explore, more to articulate.
Stripping away color has revived my love for life. I’m seeing anew each day, with curiosity.
By focusing on shapes, forms, moments, and emotional quality, I’m able to evoke an internal state through the act of observing — of putting four corners around something.
And that’s why black and white fits my lifestyle on a deeply personal level.
Between Documentation and Abstraction
I’m no longer trying to depict life as fact.
I’m working in that fine line between documentation and abstraction — where a photograph feels like a fact, but it’s really just a slice, a fragment. Something that prompts a question rather than provides an answer.
By abstracting the world through black and white, I’m able to create images that ask the viewer to look more deeply.
The streamlined workflow, the simplicity, the ability to enter flow effortlessly — all of it allows me to cultivate authentic expression. Walking, observing, photographing — it becomes inevitable.
And that inevitability brings joy.
Infinite Potential in the Mundane
I can be anywhere — a random park, a random corner, any city, any time — and because I’m seeing the world this way, elevating the mundane through the removal of color, I find infinite potential everywhere.
Light, shadow, form — that’s enough.
Even walking the same street every day, the question becomes: Can you still find something new to say?
That’s where photography is born — in boredom, openness, and the challenge of cultivating curiosity.
Living and photographing in Philadelphia, the city lends itself to black and white. The architecture, the timelessness, the history — it works. And on a practical level, black and white makes the game easier. More effortless.
Abstraction becomes the solution to the mundane.
Like a river that’s always changing, light is always shifting. I can never make the same photograph twice. By following light and returning to black and white, I’m always returning to a blank slate.
Returning to Day One
Shooting in black and white isn’t just a technical decision for me.
It’s a way to align my body, my soul, and my spirit — to enter a flow state each and every day. It’s a way of returning to day one.
Hopefully, by sharing these ideas, you can understand why I photograph this way and where I’m headed with my work.
That’s pretty much it.
Thank you for reading. I’ll see you in the next one.
Today I want to talk about how to find your style in street photography.
I don’t believe that style has anything to do with aesthetic decisions like whether you shoot black and white or color. I don’t believe style emerges from how you operate a camera. I don’t believe it has anything to do with available light versus flash.
I believe style emerges from your subconscious mind.
When you’re out there photographing, you’re not in control of everything. You’re only in control of so much. The moments that come your way, what you put inside the frame, and what you leave outside the frame — that’s where style lives.
We’re in control of how often we walk. We’re in control of what we notice. We’re in control of what we photograph.
And when we click the shutter, that decision comes from instinct. It’s a primal response. An internal compass guiding us through the world.
Style isn’t rational. It’s instinctual.
Style Isn’t a Checklist
I don’t believe style comes from giving yourself a checklist, a theme, a project, or a box to put yourself in so that you can “find” your expression.
Authentic expression arises through time, consistency, and repetition.
The more you walk. The more you photograph. The more your expression reveals itself.
Style emerges naturally through daily practice — through what you’re drawn to, what you include, and what you exclude. It compounds over time.
The camera you use, the settings you choose — those things only go so far.
Your style speaks through the frames themselves.
Removing the Photographer
My practice today is about removing identity.
I’m not trying to say something with my photography. I’m trying to get out of the way and allow instinct and intuition to carry the frame.
I think of style now as entering flow — becoming a vessel for the medium — making it inevitable that my natural expression shows up in the photographs.
That means stripping the process bare.
Technical Constraints as a Path to Flow
On a practical level, this means the simplest, most streamlined approach to photography possible.
When you look at photographers like Garry Winogrand, Daido Moriyama, Bruce Gilden, or Alex Webb, their technical choices absolutely shaped their expression. The camera, the lens, the approach — those constraints mattered.
But going forward, for me, it’s about removing friction.
I want to think less. I want to shoot from instinct.
That’s why my workflow is built around speed and simplicity.
I shoot with a Ricoh GR. High-contrast black and white. Small JPEG files. All processing baked into the camera. Automatic modes. Loose framing off the LCD. Point and shoot.
No post-processing. No thinking.
These creative constraints make photography inevitable.
Becoming the Vessel
Your expression reveals itself only when you stop wrestling with the medium.
You find your authentic voice once you’ve mastered the camera and learned to recognize moments instinctually.
The technical limitations you give yourself aren’t restrictions — they’re permissions. They allow flow. They remove friction. They make expression unavoidable.
Style appears when you stop trying to express it.
Style Is Always in Flux
There is no final style. There is no peak.
Your voice evolves. Your approach shifts. Your expression flows.
I’ve spent a decade photographing — moving from vibrant color to high-contrast black and white — and each phase opened a new space to explore.
That’s the point.
Street photography, for me, is about returning to instinct. Returning to intuition. Returning to that primal feeling that arises when you press the shutter.
That moment — irrational, subconscious, embodied — that’s your style.
You can’t force it. You can’t plan it. You can only show up and do the work.
Find a workflow that makes photography inevitable. Walk consistently. Photograph instinctually.
And your style will emerge naturally, frame by frame.
Thanks for watching. I’ll see you in the next one. Peace.
The modern world is obsessed with boxing themselves into a certain identity. Whether it’s your:
Race
Gender
Nationality
Sexuality
Religion
Profession
Hobby
Let go of it all. Stop putting yourself in a box. Stop being a slave to your identity. It’s like voluntarily putting shackles on your soul and making it a prison.
What if the world is a prison, but you had the keys to free yourself?
How to become free?
Let go of the identity. By identifying with anything in particular, you’re just another sheep in the herd. By letting go of the things you identify with, you become yourself.
Just study the etymology of words–
The word identity comes from the Latin identitas, meaning “sameness” or “the same.” Here’s a breakdown:
Latin root: idem – meaning “the same”
Suffix: -itas – forming abstract nouns (like -ity in English)
Original Latin word: identitas = “the quality of being the same”
Over time, “identity” evolved to include:
Personal identity: What makes you “you” across time
Social identity: How you are recognized or categorized by others
Philosophical identity: The condition of being itself or remaining the same in logic/metaphysics
So at its root, identity is about continuity and sameness, not difference. The paradox is that in modern use, it’s often associated with what makes someone different or unique.
By self identifying with something, you are basically just saying that you are the same as everyone else. If you strive to be different, just let go of anything you identify with.
The most toxic form of identity is identity politics
When people organize around their identity, it actually causes MORE division than community. By focusing on your identity, whether you are black or white, republican or democrat, you are actually just boxing yourself in the corner, enslaving yourself to a label, and causing more division and hate in the world.
You are what you are not
A much more interesting approach to life seems to be identifying with what you ARE NOT. Meaning- the more things you acquire, the more things you identify with, actually make you LESS of an individual. So in order to become a true individual, in order to cultivate your true identity, simply identify yourself with the things that you DON’T do or DON’T consume.
Christian mysticism is the stream of Christianity that focuses on direct experience of God—not just belief, doctrine, or ritual, but an inner transformation and union with the divine.
At its heart is the idea that God is not only something to be understood intellectually, but something to be encountered, experienced, and lived.
What Christian Mysticism Is (Simply)
A simple way to put it:
Christian mysticism is the pursuit of union with God through prayer, contemplation, purification of the heart, and love.
Mystics often describe:
Deep inner stillness
Experiences of overwhelming love or presence
A sense of unity with all creation
Detachment from ego, status, or material striving
Seeing God in everything
It’s less about theology debates and more about transformation of the soul.
Core Ideas of Christian Mysticism
1. Union with God
Mystics believe the ultimate aim of life is union with God—sometimes called:
Theosis (Eastern Christianity)
Divine union
The unitive way
This doesn’t mean becoming God, but becoming fully aligned with divine love.
2. Purification of the Self
Mystics often speak about:
Letting go of pride
Detaching from ego
Simplifying life
Cultivating humility
The idea is that God is always present, but the noise of the mind and the desires of the ego obscure that presence.
3. Contemplation and Silence
Mystics emphasize:
Silent prayer
Meditation on scripture
Stillness
Watching the breath
Being present
Not asking for things—just being with God.
4. Love as the Highest Reality
For many Christian mystics:
God is not just truth or power — God is Love itself.
This leads to:
Compassion toward others
Seeing the divine in every person
A sense of universal kinship
Influential Christian Mystics
Pseudo-Dionysius (5th–6th century)
He taught apophatic theology — the idea that God is beyond all concepts.
Instead of saying what God is, he emphasized saying what God is not:
Not limited
Not material
Not confined
God is beyond language and thought.
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328)
Eckhart taught that:
There is a divine spark within the soul
The goal is inner stillness
Detachment leads to union with God
He suggested that God is found in the ground of the soul.
St. Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582)
She described the spiritual life as a journey through an “Interior Castle” with many rooms, leading to union with God in the innermost chamber.
Her writings are very psychological and practical about prayer.
St. John of the Cross (1542–1591)
He wrote about the Dark Night of the Soul:
A period of spiritual dryness
Loss of certainty
Feeling abandoned by God
But he taught this is actually a purification leading to deeper union.
The Three Classical Stages of the Mystical Path
Many Christian writers describe the journey in three phases:
Purgative Way Letting go of sin, ego, and attachments.
Illuminative Way Growing in understanding, prayer, and virtue.
Unitive Way Experiencing deep peace and union with God.
Practices in Christian Mysticism
Common practices include:
Silent contemplative prayer
Fasting
Solitude
Reading scripture slowly (Lectio Divina)
Walking in nature
Simplicity of life
Many mystics also worked with their hands—gardening, manual labor, walking—because embodiment was important.
Eastern Christian Mysticism (Hesychasm)
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition:
Repetition of the Jesus Prayer
Breath awareness
Stillness (hesychia = silence)
Goal: Prayer of the heart — where prayer becomes continuous and natural.
What Makes Christian Mysticism Different
Compared to philosophy or theology alone, mysticism emphasizes:
