Flux Is Fun: Why I Stopped Chasing My Best Photograph

What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante — getting my morning started here in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. Snapshotting my way through the day with the Ricoh GR IIIx. Look at the drama in the sky. Cropped into 71 millimeters. Beautiful.

Today I’ve been thinking about flux.

What is flux?
Why flux?

I recently created a website where you can access every photograph I’ve made over the past three years — pretty much never missing a single day. Everything is organized chronologically: year, month, day. A full timeline. Something like 13,000 photographs. You can scroll through my life, moment by moment.

When I think about flux, I think about change.

I’ve been photographing for around ten years now. For the first seven, I was shooting color, traveling the world, working with layers, trying to improve, trying to make the next best photograph. But over the past three years, I’ve undergone a dramatic shift — both personally and creatively — transitioning fully into high-contrast black and white.

Now my affirmation is simple:

My next photograph is my best photograph.

I’ve entered a stream of becoming. A state of evolution and change through the photographs I make. That’s why I wanted all of my images laid out sequentially — not as highlights, not as a portfolio — but as a living record of change.

The game now is the mundane.

The question I ask myself every day is:
Can I walk the same mundane lane and still find something new to say?

Burnout comes from expectation.
Stagnation comes from boxing yourself in.

When you decide what street photography must be, that’s where creativity dies. Motivation isn’t found in ideas — it’s found in movement. Two legs. A body moving through the world.

I never want to feel stagnant.
I never want to feel finished.

By switching to black and white, I returned to the essence of the medium: light.

Light is never the same.
It’s always changing.

The way light casts itself upon the world — people, places, things — will never repeat itself. That’s why I remind myself constantly:

You cannot make the same photograph twice.

I can walk the same streets every day and always come home with something new. That realization alone fuels my practice with an abundance of energy and vitality.

On a practical level, I like to photograph while moving. I remove control. I’m rarely stationary. I let chance enter the frame. I follow the light and allow it to be my compass — my guiding star.

When light becomes the subject, the possibilities feel infinite.

That’s empowering.

Change. Flux. Transformation.
This is where joy is found.

It’s in the process.
It’s in surprising yourself.
It’s in never knowing exactly what will appear in the frame.

I never want to feel bogged down by photography or by ideas of what kind of photographer I’m supposed to be. I want to live in a constant state of evolution.

Even on a physical level, we’re always changing. Muscles tear and rebuild. Cells regenerate. Mentally, spiritually, emotionally — we are never the same. I don’t want one opinion for life. I don’t want one way of seeing for life.

Pure bliss comes from recognizing that you are always becoming.

Returning to this simple snapshot approach — photographing light, photographing in black and white — allows me to return to day one. To photograph endlessly without the burden of expectation or validation.

Every night before I go to bed, I recognize that I could die.
Every morning feels like rebirth.

A blank slate.

Each click of the shutter is a life affirmation — a quiet yes to existence. I treat every photograph like it could be my last.

That mindset shifts everything.

I think about Plato’s allegory of the cave — shadows cast on a wall, mistaken for truth. Photography feels like that tension between light and illusion. I’m abstracting reality, crushing shadows, exposing for highlights, creating something new from what already exists.

The photographs I make aren’t the world — they become a new world.

I find meaning in the mundane. Walking through this park. Trees. Cracks in the ground. Light hitting leaves. The magic isn’t in what I intend to photograph — it’s in what reveals itself after the shutter clicks.

That surprise is what keeps me going.

A photograph is not who I am.
It’s who I was.

The next frame is who I’m becoming.

That’s flux.

The real tragedy is staying the same forever — especially as an artist. That’s boring. Change is more fun. Evolution is more alive.

So I follow what feels joyful.
I follow what feels playful.
I follow the light.

Flux is fun.