So I’ve been taking lots of photos, but I haven’t been posting much. Well that needs to change, so I’m going to finally push out a creative project that I’ve been working on for a while. The Album Cover Series: a fun and/or thought provoking photo that I’ve taken in the past styled as an album cover with a short story behind the photo. I’ll be posting these on Mondays!
Album Cover #1
Posted August 11, 2025, photo taken February 5, 2022
“We came out here for a weekend under the stars… but the stars watched in silence as the ghost town claimed us. Now, only a skull remains to tell the story.”
Well maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I did join my friends out for a camping trip in the sparsely populated area of Arizona. They had came out to hunt javelina, but I came out to hunt for great photos. So we stumbled upon this sign on a dirt road and I had to take a photo!
Album Cover #2
Posted August 18, 2025, photo taken June 21, 2009
Unlike most of my photos I don’t really have much context for this photo besides it was taken at 1:57AM on June 21, 2009 on a Blackberry Storm. But I come back to this photo periodically and it provokes many emotions. Emotions that until recently, I haven’t put down in writing until I found inspiration while creating The Album Cover Series. So let’s dive in…
“We’re all villains in someone’s story, painted in shadows by choices we may not even realize we’ve made. Yet the harsher truth is found when I turn inward. I have always been my own worst critic, but even my inner warnings often fall on deaf ears. Time and again, I find myself standing in the ruins of my own undoing, the architect of failures built from familiar patterns I should have long since broken. There’s a darkness within me, subtle but persistent, that whispers me back toward the same roads I swore I’d never walk again. And so the cycle continues, until I learn to face the villain I see staring back in the mirror.”
Album Cover #3
Posted March 30, 2026, photo taken August 18, 2008
Life has always come in phases for me—some fast, some slow, all meaningful in their own way.
This was my scientist phase.
August 18, 2008. A summer spent studying dragonflies near Pellston, Michigan. Living out of a tin cabin, surrounded by nature, chasing both data and moments.
I stepped outside, set the camera timer, and captured something I didn’t yet realize would matter.
That single frame would go on to inspire my Album Cover Series.
Album Cover #4
Posted April 6, 2026, photo taken January 6, 2020
So it was January 6, 2020—Roatán, Honduras. The sky hung low with clouds, soft and unassuming, casting a muted calm over the island. At the time, it felt like just another overcast day, the kind that gently dulls the horizon but never quite steals the moment. But looking back now, I can’t help but see it differently. The clouds stretched far beyond the shoreline, farther than I could have understood then—quietly foreshadowing a world about to change.
If I had known how heavy that horizon truly was, how much was waiting just beyond it, I might have lingered a little longer, breathed a little deeper, and held tighter to every simple moment. Funny how hindsight sharpens everything—how it turns an ordinary day into something you wish you could step back into, if only for a little while longer.
Album Cover #5
Posted April 13, 2026, photo taken September 11, 2024
So I got the chance to tour a penthouse suite in a Reno casino tower. Not my usual lane, but it was one of those moments where you step into a different world for a bit.
It’s always interesting seeing how the high rollers live—space, views, details you don’t even think about when you’re booking a regular room. Meanwhile, I’m usually just looking for a clean place to crash between everything else.
But standing up there, looking out over the city from the top, it was a reminder—sometimes it’s not about splurging, it’s just about experiencing something different, even if only for a moment.
