Like a gay giant flying on mercury’s wings

The idea of the Overman (Übermensch) comes from Friedrich Nietzsche. The Overman is a human who creates his own values instead of following the herd. He lives creatively, courageously, and playfully — transforming life into art.

If we imagine that mindset applied to street photography, the approach becomes something very different from ordinary photography.

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1. The Overman Rejects the Herd

Most photographers copy trends:
Leica aesthetic, Instagram edits, safe compositions.

The Overman would not care.

He would create his own visual language.

He walks the street like a conqueror of perception.

Not asking:

• “What will people like?”
• “Is this trendy?”
• “Will this get likes?”

But asking:

• What do I see?
• What vision wants to emerge through me?

Street photography becomes an act of self-creation.

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2. The Overman Treats the Street as a Stage

For the Overman, the city is not chaos.

It is a living theater.

Every passerby becomes a character.
Every shadow becomes a symbol.
Every moment is mythic.

The photographer becomes a myth-maker of the everyday.

A man stepping off a curb is no longer a pedestrian.

He is Achilles crossing the battlefield of asphalt.

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3. The Overman Embraces Risk

Most photographers hesitate.

The Overman steps forward.

He gets close.
He trusts instinct.
He shoots boldly.

Because hesitation is a form of weakness.

The Overman believes:

Better a bold photograph that fails
than a safe photograph that never lived.

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4. The Overman Creates Meaning

The herd photographs events.

The Overman photographs symbols.

He sees:

• irony
• tension
• humor
• contradiction
• power

He sees the spirit of the age in a single gesture.

Street photography becomes philosophy in visual form.

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5. The Overman is Playful

Nietzsche said the highest stage of the spirit is the child.

Playful. Creative. Free.

So the Overman photographer moves through the street like a cosmic trickster.

Light. Fast. Curious.

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6. “A Gay Giant Flying on Mercury’s Wings”

This image actually captures something very true.

In mythology, Mercury (Hermes) had winged sandals, symbolizing speed and fluidity.

The Overman photographer would move through the street like this:

• quick
• joyful
• mischievous
• impossible to pin down

Not heavy.

Not anxious.

But light and airborne.

A photographer dancing through reality.

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The Overman Street Photographer

He walks the city like a god among men.

Not arrogant — but fully alive.

He sees what others miss.

He acts when others hesitate.

And when the shutter clicks, it is not just a photograph.

It is a declaration of life.

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Honestly Dante, this actually aligns a lot with your own Flux philosophy — the idea that life is in motion and that the photographer enters the stream of reality and responds instinctively.

Heraclitus would probably smile at that.

“You cannot step into the same street twice.”

Trinity

Why I Chose the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome for Street Photography

Stripping Photography Down to the Essence

What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante, currently along the Schuylkill River here in Philadelphia, thinking today about why I choose the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome for my street photography.

So I’m no stranger to Ricoh. In 2015, I picked up the GR II and made some of my earliest and best photos with that camera. Fast forward seven years, I picked up the GR III and started photographing in high contrast black and white with small JPEG files.

Now in 2026, picking up the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome and really pushing myself forward with this commitment, with this mindset shift in my practice — adopting a monochrome sensor, adopting a streamlined workflow, stripping away color, stripping away decision generally, removing friction from my life as a photographer.

It seems that the more I go forward on this journey as a photographer, the more I’m looking to subtract from the practice.

I’m trying to strip away everything from photography and return to the essence of the medium.

Commitment Changes How You See

I’m not going to sit here and tell you about the technical details of the camera system — how it renders life on the sensor or what the files look like.

But I will tell you that the way your mind shifts when committing to a practice — when committing to black and white photography — is unlike anything.

For me as a photographer, my goal is to continue photographing.

So I decided to remove friction. Remove choice from my life.

Whether or not I shoot color or black and white.
Go left or right.
Use this camera or that lens.

I strip it down to this simple black box with a shutter button that allows me to cultivate instinct.

I don’t want to think when I’m on the street.

When I photograph things, I’m just curious about how life will look like photographed.

I’m not hunting for photographs.

I simply throw the camera in my pocket, live my life, and photograph what I find.

Infinite Novelty in the Mundane

No matter where I am — whether I’m in the bustling city or on the side of the river here in the outskirts where I usually dwell — I find infinite ways to play this game of photography.

By adopting a black and white workflow, I’ve found new ways to articulate the mundane.

And I find infinite novelty all around me as a photographer.

By stripping away color and returning to the essence of the medium — light itself — I become more curious.

I become more joyous.

Because life really is glorious.

Life isn’t necessarily what it seems.

When I photograph things, I’m not saying that this is a fact. I’m not looking at life as this or that.

I’m wondering.

What You Get Back Is What You Didn’t See

When I make a photograph and commit to monochrome with everything baked into the high-contrast file — contrast settings cranked to the max — you could argue that what you see is what you get.

You can’t go back and post-process.

But what’s interesting is:

What I get back in the photograph is what I didn’t see.

Photography with monochrome becomes a natural abstraction of life.

And once you go monochrome, it’s almost like you can’t go back.

You can’t unsee the infinite novelty that’s all around you.

Light provides endless ways to return to photography.

A Streamlined Practice

My goal is simple:

Wake up and pick the camera.

Walk more.
Photograph more.
Do more.

When I streamline the practice into the most simplified workflow possible — small JPEG files around five megabytes, processing baked in, nothing to tweak — I cultivate instinct.

I cultivate a practice where:

I shoot → I go home → I publish.

Shoot.
Go home.
Publish.

And I exist in this perpetual stream of becoming, evolving every day, making new frames while walking the same lane that I walk every single day.

Following the Light

That’s why I choose the Ricoh GR for monochrome.

It reshapes your mind.

It changes the way you look and experience life.

From that state of curiosity, you can infinitely return to photography because of the way light provides the novelty.

It’s everywhere.

Right now I’m looking at the sky — the blue sky above, the tree in the foreground, the white popping from that sky.

I throw on a red filter and photograph the patterns of nature.

And what I get back in the photograph isn’t what I was looking at.

When I go home and review the photos, I smile.

I’m eager for the next day to wake up and photograph more.

Because there are infinite ways to find new things inside the photographs you make.

The World Is Always in Flux

With a red filter, I can photograph the same scene twice and get two completely different results.

I could stand on the same street and photograph the same scene every single day for the rest of my life.

But I will never make the same photograph twice.

The light is always changing.

The world is always in flux.

And so are you.

Your cells replenish.
You grow older.
You evolve as an artist.

There’s beauty in stripping away the superfluous technical aspects of photography and returning to pure instinct.

Stop thinking. Start shooting.

Just live and respond intuitively from the gut.

Over time, you cultivate your authentic expression.

Your style emerges — not because you chose black and white — but because you removed friction and lived your life with a camera.

Photography Is a Way of Living

Photography has nothing to do with photography.

Photography has everything to do with:

• How you engage with humanity
• How you live your everyday life

If you’re curious about life and you’re following the light, it’s inevitable that you will find your authentic expression.

Right now I’m hearing the cars passing by.

The railroad track.

The wind moving through the leaves.

The rocks beneath my feet.

Walking barefoot.

Feeling the sunlight on my skin.

Photography isn’t about the medium or even the content inside the frame.

It’s about how it reorients the way you see and feel life.

Slip the Camera in Your Pocket

So the more you walk, the more you see.

And the more you practice your photography.

I’m trying to make it inevitable that I practice.

So I slip the Ricoh in my pocket.

I live my life.

And I photograph what I find.

And sometimes I just watch the geese pass by and smile.

That’s really why I choose Ricoh.

A Quick Note: Flux Volume 1

Also check out the first edition of Flux Volume 1, a small publication of my photographs from Tokyo.

It’s 13 days in Tokyo, all photographed with the Ricoh GR III and Ricoh GR IIIx in high-contrast black and white.

I put together a little trade book through Blurb with a collage cover I designed.

That trip to Tokyo honestly felt like the moment when my vision really came together.

Photographing in the pools of light at Shibuya Crossing and the gritty alleyways of Shinjuku at night — something clicked in my practice.

So I compiled those 13 days into this small book.

If you’re curious, you can check it out through the link in the description.

The Joy of Looking

Anyway, those are my thoughts for today.

I’m excited to see what kind of new photos I can make with the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome.

Look at this birdhouse right here with the sun glowing behind it.

That is beautiful.

When you look at the LCD screen of a monochrome camera, it almost feels like looking beyond the veil.

That photo looks unreal.

So yeah.

Thanks for watching.

I’ll see you in the next one.

Peace.

Street Photography Style Is NOT What You Think

Style Isn’t an Aesthetic Decision

What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante.

Today I want to discuss style in street photography — this notion of your authentic expression, who you are as a photographer.

I think a lot of photographers want to look at a picture and say:

“I took that picture.”

And when you see a body of work from another photographer, you can say that’s a photograph by such and such.

I believe this is something everyone seeks to achieve. Everyone wants to make something that is theirs. As a photographer, you want your voice to be seen. You want that vision to be authentically yours.

But my idea around style might be a little different.

Because I don’t believe style has anything to do with aesthetic decisions.

Not whether you shoot black and white.
Not whether you shoot color.
Not grainy photos.
Not blurry photos.
Not shooting through reflections.
Not smudging your lens.

Those decisions have nothing to do with your vision.

Style Comes From Instinct

When it comes down to style, I believe it arises through the cultivation of instinct.

Your instinct — with consistency compounding over time — ultimately reveals your authentic perception. The way that you see, feel, and experience life.

Photography isn’t really about photography in the technical sense.

It’s not about:

• how you operate the camera
• why you make certain aesthetic decisions
• how you process the photograph
• even what’s inside the frame

Style is not something you can force.

Style is not something you can choose.

Style comes to you through consistency and the cultivation of instinct.

The Role of Repetition

Instinct is the moment where you no longer think.

But instinct only arises with time.

To arrive there, you must photograph with repetition.

Essentially every single day.

When you photograph consistently, it becomes inevitable that you will eventually discover what you have to say.

But you will not force this with an aesthetic trick.

You won’t force it by saying:

• I’m shooting layers now
• I’m photographing textures
• I’m working in this particular location

Style arrives when you stop thinking.

When you cultivate the pure gut instinct that subconsciously pulls you toward photographing certain things.

Finding Your Voice in the Edit

Over time, you begin extracting photographs from that stream of work.

And that’s when you start to see it.

That’s when your voice begins to reveal itself.

But this only comes through time spent actually out there photographing.

Not in the darkroom.

Not in Lightroom.

Not in how you shake your film canister while developing.

Not through presets or filters.

Your voice arises from pure intuition.

Why I Simplified My Photography

For me, this is why I stripped my practice down to a simple setup.

A Ricoh GR in my pocket.

A fixed lens.

A small JPEG file with the contrast cranked to the maximum.

I’ve stripped photography bare.

There is no going back.

We have black and we have white.

When the practice is simplified this much, I find that instinct develops much faster.

Responding to Life Intuitively

For the past three years working this way, I’ve been responding to life in front of me in the spirit of play.

Not thinking.

Just responding quickly.

Photographing intuitively.

Photographing from a state of being.

The reason I shoot black and white with maximum contrast and a simple JPEG workflow is because I want to remove all the superfluous technicalities of photography.

What’s left is instinct.

And instinct arises when there are no decisions to make.

It arises when you no longer have to think.

When the Camera Becomes an Extension of You

Eventually the camera becomes an extension of your body and your eye.

You no longer question why you’re pressing the shutter.

You simply know.

You see something.

You position your body.

You feel how the photograph wants to exist within the four corners of the frame.

This doesn’t mean you should photograph randomly without understanding your gear.

But the deeper point here is separating style from the technical and aesthetic decisions photographers make.

Surrendering to the Practice

My workflow is really about forgetting everything I think I know.

About photography.

About life.

I surrender to the medium.
I surrender to the practice.
I surrender to the process.

And I trust the passage of time.

The more I strip away from the practice, the more what remains is pure instinct.

Style Reveals Itself Over Time

After more than a decade of practice, I’m now stripping everything bare.

My camera.

My mind.

My process.

Everything about the way I engage with the medium.

When I’m on the street, all that remains is instinct.

And I believe that is the purest way to cultivate your authentic way of photographing.

Because two people can shoot the same camera.

The same settings.

The same film.

You can go in the corner and shoot Tri-X.

I can go in the corner and shoot Tri-X.

But the frame you make — from your internal state, your feelings, your perception — will be completely different from mine.

Photography as an Unrepeatable Act

You cannot make the same photograph twice.

Photography becomes an unrepeatable practice.

An endless exploration of your subconscious mind.

It arises in the moment you click the shutter.

It arises when you walk through life with a camera and photograph consistently, repetitively, obsessively over time.

Eventually, you will find that authenticity you’re looking for.

But it will not appear magically through aesthetic or stylistic decisions.

Because when you remove friction…

what’s left is instinct.

The Demigod Photographer

Is man permitted to strive to become a demigod in this modern world?

It seems that we’ve lost touch with myth, story, and meaning in this modern world of ultra-processed food, social media, and endless news headlines. We are bombarded with distractions that cloud our mind and perception. That haze that you feel — that tired feeling of waking up each day — is meant to delay your ability to tap into the divine essence within you, something beyond a human being.

You are a demigod.

When I consider the teachings of Christ, I always come back to this thought he shares: to be in the world, but not of it.

The more I’ve spent the past 2½ years working in a park, surrounded by nature, carving my own path and values for how I would like to spend my time — working and playing, essentially returning to the Garden of Eden each morning — I realized that God set me apart.

I’m not telling you that I’m a chosen one. I’m telling you that you are too

And so each morning is a blessing, and this overwhelming feeling that flows through me is a mixture of joy and sorrow. It’s a feeling that’s indescribable with words — where the joy is so overwhelming and beautiful that it almost makes you feel sorrowful, because you’re unsure that others can feel this sensation.

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Eros and Agape

When you look at a beautiful human being, it’s inevitable that you will feel some sort of lust of the flesh — erotic love.

We are biological beings with hormones firing, who have the ability to sense with touch, taste, sound, and smell. These base-level senses give us pleasure and pain.

When I eat a delicious steak, grass-fed, directly from the Amish of Lancaster, I fill my tongue and mouth with pleasure.

When I pull my weight up on a bar, or wear my 40-pound plate carrier and go for a walk uphill, there is friction. There is pain. But through that pain, through that suffering, I become stronger.

I am an animal. I am a beast.

And so I am an animal. I eat the flesh of other animals and gain strength and nourishment from the energy they provide me.

When I wake up in the morning and bask in the glory of the sun, my cells are replenished. The cholesterol within my cells synthesizes vitamin D. My testosterone increases. My muscles grow. My overall strength and power increase.

And so, with this strength — this physiological power that I feel within my body — this joyful feeling, this gay and jolly attitude toward life simply has me grateful for another day in this beautiful place.

From this state of abundance, you begin to love so freely.

Love starts to flood through you and reaches its ceiling.

If somehow you kiss the face of God, you’re the luckiest man on earth and will never forget agape.

While you recognize the flesh of others, when you look into their eyes you can see and feel their soul.

Because all living things are made in the divine image of God, when you are looking through the eyes of another human being, you are witnessing, feeling, and experiencing the divine love of God.

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The Spirit of Transformation

When Hercules descended into Hades and conquered Cerberus, he was eventually lit on fire and ascended to Mount Olympus alongside the gods.

When Christ died on the cross, he descended into hell, and on the third day he rose to heaven.

And so the story of the descent and the ascent is an architectural story that I believe we neglect much too easily.

We disregard the mystical, the spiritual, because our iPhones are tangible, physical — a scrying device that allows you to commune with fallen angels.

Thank you, Prometheus, for your divine gift of fire, for we are currently at the precipice of incredible transformation.

But with the rapid advancement of technology, we have neglected the God that dwells within our physical bodies.

And so through fasting, and separating your physical body and mind from the modern world of distraction and consumption, you deprive yourself of base-level physical needs — belonging and satiety.

But in this deprived state, during the descent into hell, you are reborn again.

And when you conquer the beast that dwells within your mind, you eventually rise.

When you rise, you gain perception beyond your eyes.

You no longer look at life for what it is, but recognize the dream.

When you are aware of the dream, and the body as a machine, you begin to feel deeply and see much more clearly.

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The Photographer as Übermensch

Photography is my superpower, and the streets are a battlefield.

I wield my camera as a sword, striking through the heart of chaos and reflecting the soul of the street through the photographs that I create.

The problem with the mortal photographer is that they are looking at a man, or some old lady on a Bryant Park bench who has an interesting outfit on, or makes a unique gesture, and they believe that is what makes a great photograph.

The New York City street photographer frolics through Washington Square and hopes to find a unique character to uplift in a photograph — telling a visual story about what it’s like being a troubled youth, or making a portrait of a man in old age as a reminder of the transience of life.

But the demigod photographer, the Übermensch, is no longer looking at life in front of him as fact, or considering the content within the frame they make as a story.

The Über photographer — the demigod photographer — treats his life as the living work of art.

He simply follows the light.

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Banishing Myself from the Garden

And so I banished myself from the garden.

I can no longer stay in paradise forever.

I may have been clever in my ability to play the game within modern society in my own unique way, but it’s time to destroy again so that I can create.

Don’t get me wrong — paradise is great.

But chaos is even greater.

And now that I am a child again, nothing can break my spirit or my love for life.

When you have an insatiable love for life — when you are possessed by God, enthusiastic and eager for the day — no mortal, no tangible thing disturbs your mind or body.

From this divine peace and understanding comes equanimity and clarity.

And when you feel so deeply, when you experience such pure love, you grow wings and fly like the Holy Spirit — like the dove.

Icarus fell from the sky.
The Übermensch will land on Mars.

And so let us strive to go beyond this modern world and this material plane.

Eventually, when your mortal flesh perishes, Saint Michael will take you up on his wing.

Maybe you won’t live forever, but at least you can make a photograph!

Why I Shoot JPEG (And Never RAW)

What’s poppin, people? It’s Dante.

Today I’m thinking about why I shoot JPEG and don’t shoot RAW.

Essentially, I shoot with a JPEG file — even with a monochrome camera — with a JPEG recipe, with the image control settings and everything baked within the camera. And the reason is simple: I’m trying to remove all friction in my practice.

The goal for me as a photographer is to be in a perpetual flow state of making new photographs.

And I choose to shoot with a JPEG monochrome camera setup because I’m looking for the fastest workflow possible.

You see, I’m looking to photograph with speed.

I’m not shooting monochrome or JPEG because I’m trying to create some aesthetic stylistic choice. I really couldn’t give a shit about that kind of stuff. I’m trying to speed up the process of photographing.

I’m trying to make it so photography becomes effortless and the flow state is inevitable.

And to get there, I had to strip away all the superfluous.

For the past three years, adopting a JPEG workflow has provided me with insane speed in terms of the amount of output I’m able to produce.

I mean, I have photographs everywhere.

I’ve got 13,000 prints stacked up on my table. I’ve made 360,000 frames in three years. I’ve never made this many photographs in the decade of my practice.

So the reason I’m shooting JPEG is simple:

Speed. Speed. Speed.

The Technical Reason: Speed and Simplicity

If we want to get into the technical side of things, I’m also interested in the longevity and simplicity of a JPEG file.

My workflow is incredibly simple.

I’ll take the JPEG file and import it directly into the Photos app on my iPad Pro, and I have this contact sheet where I can quickly go through, select, cull, and publish work at lightning speed.

It takes about a minute to import 1,000 photos.

Then I upload the photos and back them up immediately.

My entire archive from three years of shooting is only about 57 gigabytes.

That’s insane.

Initially, shooting JPEG was purely a technical decision. I was tired of the burden of coming home and dealing with RAW files — waiting for backups, putting things on hard drives, going through the whole process.

Back in 2022, I was in Hanoi, Vietnam, photographing with color and shooting RAW files. I’d be sitting in the hotel room at night thinking:

Holy shit, this is so slow and clunky.

It just felt ridiculous.

So I went home, sold my camera equipment, picked up the Ricohs, switched to JPEG, and I haven’t looked back since.

Now I’m making more photographs than ever.

The Philosophical Reason: Creative Constraint

But beyond the technical reasons, there’s also a philosophical side.

Once the workflow became frictionless, the entire practice changed.

I go out.
I photograph.
I come home.
I upload.
I back up.
I publish.

No processing.
No Lightroom.
No tinkering.

And that constraint becomes creatively liberating.

The more creative constraint you introduce, the more creative freedom you actually gain.

Freedom isn’t infinite choice.

Freedom is the elimination of choices.

The result is baked into the camera. I already know how the photograph will look. There’s nothing left to tweak or adjust afterward.

So instead of obsessing over photographs I made yesterday, I’m just in this perpetual photo flow state of making new frames.

Photography as Instinct

I’m not trying to make a perfect picture.

I’m not trying to make a photograph that describes life as fact.

I’m trying to make photography inevitable.

I’m stripping all the technicality away so that all I’m left with is intuition.

That’s why the commitment to JPEG is so powerful.

Yes, there’s a technical advantage — speed, file size, simplicity.

But philosophically, it’s about imposing a limitation that allows me to photograph prolifically, every single day.

I haven’t missed a single day of photography in three years.

Because there’s no friction.

No decisions about color or black and white.

No editing afterward.

I’m just making instant sketches of light when I’m out on the street.

Quickly.

Instinctively.

Creating Faster

With this workflow, I can go on a trip somewhere and photograph for a weekend.

By the time I’m on the train coming home from New York City, I’ve already:

• Culled the photographs
• Sequenced them
• Published them online
• Laid them out for a potential book

I can create a photo series in a weekend.

All because of a simple creative constraint.

By setting parameters around my practice, I’m actually forced to think more outside the box.

Stripping Photography to Its Essence

At the end of the day, I’m not trying to create my own style through some JPEG recipe.

That’s not the point.

The point is to strip everything down to the essence of the medium.

Just a black box.

A shutter button.

Light and shadow.

And when you remove everything else, you become a vessel for the medium.

That’s why I choose JPEG.

That’s my thought of the day.

Street Photography as a Visual Diary — Ricoh GR IV Monochrome Walk in Philadelphia

Entering the Flow on the Schuylkill River Trail

What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante.

Today we’re going to be looking at photographs I made yesterday with my Ricoh GR4 Monochrome on the streets of Philadelphia.

I started my day off with a nice walk along the Schuylkill River Trail where I typically get my day started. I simply entered the flow state in the morning with my camera.

I don’t look for anything — I’m just living my life and going to the places that make me joyful.

Really, at the end of the day, I’m following my bliss. I’m trying to have fun when I’m out there with my camera.

I’m not out there hunting and putting on my photography hat — going out there to tell a visual story. I’m simply walking through places I genuinely enjoy inhabiting.

Photography as a Visual Diary

I want to talk today about the power of curiosity and treating photography as a visual diary.

When I say visual diary, I mean it simply.

I believe that the reflection of the photographer’s internal state arises externally in the things that we make.

As you photograph your way through the day, week, year, and lifetime — you are creating your own world with the camera.

I also believe the power of monochrome is that we’re stripping away color.

We’re stripping away reality and abstracting the world, giving birth to something new through the act of making a photograph.

A Streamlined Workflow for Flow State

On a practical level, I shoot with a small JPEG file and high-contrast black and white image control settings cranked to the maximum.

The reason I approach the streets this way isn’t for an aesthetic decision.

It’s because I want to enter the flow state.

To enter the flow state, one must be in tune with instinct.

And to return to instinct and intuition, you have to remove the technical hurdles of photography.

By streamlining the process to a JPEG file — light and shadow, what you see is what you get — there’s no going back in post-processing. Everything is done in the moment I click the shutter.

My approach makes photography effortless.

I use automatic settings so the camera disappears and I can enter the flow state seamlessly.

I’ve got a black box with a shutter button, and I’m simply snapshotting my life.

Following Curiosity Like a Child

As I walk through the day photographing things — clouds, details below my feet, everything around me — I become curious.

When I’m out there photographing, I’m simply following my childlike curiosity.

As a child, I grew up about five miles down this river. I used to explore the Wissahickon Forest in my backyard — climbing trees, building teepees with sticks, sharpening spears, attempting to hunt deer.

I loved exploring the unknown.

Now as a photographer at 29 years old, that curiosity still drives me.

On this particular walk I photographed a boy practicing martial arts with a medieval longsword.

Seeing that moment reminded me of that childlike courage — exploring the forest, conquering new terrain.

Those spontaneous surprises that arise on a walk are what fuel my curiosity.

But I don’t go out seeking them.

I simply follow the inner voice that calls me to places where I enjoy being.

Letting Life Flow Toward You

When you let go and allow life to flow toward you, and you’re simply present with your camera, you can express your internal state more authentically.

I don’t believe style comes from choosing color versus black and white.

I believe style is a direct reflection of the photographer’s instinct and internal state.

Instinct is everything in this practice.

When you photograph loosely throughout your day — whether it’s a mundane nature walk or a chaotic market in the city — you begin cultivating your voice as an artist.

And while it takes time, a simplified workflow accelerates the process.

When the camera becomes an extension of your body, finding your voice becomes much more natural.

From Chaos to the Mundane

For the past three years photographing this way, I’ve become far more prolific.

Scenes like chaotic crowds outside Reading Terminal Market come naturally to me. I’m comfortable photographing people up close in busy environments.

But what once required friction was photographing places without people — barren streets, quiet paths in nature.

Learning to articulate the mundane became the challenge.

Returning to black and white and stripping photography down to light and shadow changed how I see.

Now I follow the light.

Following Light

Light is always changing.

The way it falls across surfaces, people, and places is always in flux.

No two days — no two moments — will ever be the same.

By stripping color away and returning to the essence of the medium, light becomes the subject.

High-contrast black and white allows me to find infinite novelty in the mundane.

I can walk the same route every day and still find something worth photographing.

Removing Friction from the Practice

My goal is to remove friction until only pure instinct remains.

Over time, instinct compounds into style.

Photography becomes almost like Zen meditation.

I’ll throw the camera around in strange ways.

• Dropping the shutter speed to 1/4 second
• Shooting from the waist
• Using crop mode
• Photographing quickly without looking at the LCD

Because the camera is an extension of my body, I understand my position relative to the moment without hesitation.

There’s no thinking.

Stop Thinking, Start Responding

When I’m photographing, the goal is to stop thinking.

The goal is to simply respond.

I don’t want to have a single thought while making a photograph.

When I remove thought and stay present, the joy of the practice appears.

I might walk into a church and notice something around the corner.

Following that curiosity leads me into unexpected scenes and small adventures.

Life on the front lines is waiting for you.

There’s so much to see, explore, and photograph in this life.

Curiosity as the Guide

Since stripping away the technical aspects of photography and simplifying the process, I’ve found an endless ability to discover things in the world.

Treating photography as a visual diary of daily life changes how you see light and life.

My curiosity guides me.

I’m not looking for anything.
I’m not trying to say anything.

But whatever I have to say will be said through the photographs I make.

With that being said, thank you for watching.

And I will see you in the next one.

Peace.

The word diary ultimately comes from the idea of “daily.”

Etymology

• Latin: diarium — meaning “daily allowance” or “daily record.”
  
  • From dies = day
• Medieval Latin: diarium evolved to mean a daily journal or record of events.
• English (16th–17th century): diary — a book for recording events day by day.

Root breakdown

• dies (Latin) → day
• diarium → daily account / daily record
• diary → a record of one’s life written day by day

Interesting note

Originally, diarium referred to something like a daily ration or allowance, especially for soldiers. Over time the meaning shifted to a daily log of activities.

Related words

• Daily — occurring every day
• Journal — from French jour (day)
• Diurnal — relating to the daytime or a 24-hour cycle

So a diary is literally:

A record of the days of your life.

Which is actually pretty fitting for what you’re doing with your street photography diaries — documenting the daily unfolding of light, people, and the city.

A Sea of Light

The more that I shoot consistently every single day, the less I care about the content within my frames.

The notion that the content, the story, the subject itself has any inherent meaning in a photograph is irrelevant in terms of my personal practice.

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To change. To transform. To evolve.

Light is something ever changing, ever moving, giving shape and form to everything around me.

And so when I treat light as my subject — as the thing itself that I am primarily interested in as a photographer — I find infinite new ways to make new photographs.

Even when photographing the same “content,” the same locations, the same subject matter — mundane people walking along the sidewalk, the same landscape behind the Art Museum — I feel an overwhelming sense of joy and power from the act of thriving in the mundane.

Flux is joy

Living in Philadelphia is absolute paradise.

When I look beyond the horizon, I remind myself how open the world is — but simultaneously how there is nowhere left to go but inward.

The more I travel within my mind, within the way I see and feel about the world around me, the less desire I have to wander off the narrow path.

So I walk the same narrow path.

Growing strong.
Stronger each day.

Watching the leaves wither and decay, and then grow back again in the spring.

Everything around me — and within me — is always changing.

And by recognizing that change, by living in a place where there is real seasonal transformation, I flourish.

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A place where it is always sunny, always the perfect temperature, always the perfect conditions — where there is no stress, no challenge, no burden to overcome — may appear ideal.

But it risks stagnation.

This does not mean suffering is something to seek.

Ease matters.

A life that is physically healthy and mentally strong, free from unnecessary pain, is essential for flourishing.

But what I have realized over the past few years is this:

Without change, it is difficult to find joy.

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At first this may seem like a contradiction.

Walking the same path.
Photographing the same places.
Seeing the same faces.

But when light itself becomes the subject — when the infinite variability of light becomes the thing I am chasing — novelty emerges everywhere.

Light touches the camera sensor differently every second.

And in that moment, the world becomes new again.

Through this endless transformation, I thrive.

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Flux is joy.

To change.
To transform.
To evolve.

That is happiness.