08/31/2026
Photographers have a strange problem: we spend our lives preserving everyone else, and somehow forget to preserve ourselves.
This photograph was taken in 2018, not long after I arrived in the Tri-Cities.
I was 38 years old.
I had very little. I was looking for work, looking for something to eat, and every morning I woke with the same question waiting for me:
How am I going to feed these two?
At 38, I thought a man was supposed to have answers. Instead, I felt as though somewhere along the road I had taken a wrong turn and failed to become the man I was supposed to be.
But life has a strange way of hiding its treasures inside the years we remember as our hardest.
I thought I had nothing.
And yet, there I was.
Two little human beings stood beside me who, without knowing it, were giving me a reason to wake up the next morning and try once more.
Our time together would be short. Eventually they had to return to their mother, back to Florida. I didn't know then how much distance can change the weight of a memory, or how an ordinary afternoon can become precious simply because it will never happen again.
Maybe that's why this photograph means so much to me now.
That afternoon we were at my mother's little store, Benji's. My brother was learning how to use the camera.
There is a strange irony in being a photographer. We collect evidence of everyone else's existence. We photograph people, streets, landscapes, celebrations, sunsets—little fragments of lives passing in front of us.
And somehow, when the years have gone by and we begin searching through those memories, we discover that we left very little evidence that we were there too.
So I looked at my brother and said:
“Brother, take a picture of me. Something to remember.”
And he did.
Nothing extraordinary happened.
There was no beautiful location. No perfect lighting. No carefully planned composition. There was only a little family store, a brother learning a camera, a father carrying more fear than he wanted his children to see, and three people standing together during a difficult chapter of their lives.
Then the shutter opened and closed.
A fraction of a second.
That was all.
I can still remember that afternoon.
And when I look at this photograph today, I understand something the 38-year-old man standing there could not:
I wasn't a failure.
I was scared. I was broke. I was uncertain. But I was still trying.
Maybe that's what photographs are really for.
We think we're photographing a face.
A place.
An afternoon.
But every once in a while, the camera preserves something whose meaning will remain hidden from us for years.
My brother didn't simply photograph the three of us that day.
He preserved a life I thought was falling apart while, quietly, it was still giving me reasons to live.
And somehow, despite the fear, despite the uncertainty, despite everything I believed I didn't have…
we smiled.
For one small fraction of a second, the camera didn't record the struggle. It didn't record the empty pockets, the questions, or the fear of tomorrow.
It recorded us.
Together.
And all these years later, perhaps that is the part I understand differently.
I thought I had nothing.
But there I was, holding everything.
It was beautiful.
