I’ve spent the last few years trying to capture the moments that make me pause. This post is a mix of those photos, a few thoughts on what I notice, and a simple technical lesson I’ve picked up along the way.
Hello, and welcome into something a bit different. Today’s post is a journey into photography — cell‑phone style. The photo above was captured on asummer Monday evening while hanging out with my men’s group. We were sitting around a campfire, and I watched the smoke rise in slow motion, drifting into the sun as it dropped toward the horizon. It felt like a perfect photo moment.
I don’t have a fancy camera or an expensive zoom lens, but the kind of photos I take don’t really need that. Landscape shots are what I enjoy most, and if a little wildlife wanders into the frame — like the iguana below, stretched out on a pier in St. Thomas, looking completely unbothered — then that works too. He seemed to enjoy posing.
With each new model of phone that comes out, new innovations seem to open up for an amateur photographer like myself. Over the last several years, I’ve spent a lot of time looking for that shot — the one that speaks to me, the one that brings a moment of awe. Every photo you and I take has the potential to be a masterpiece, and each one is original. What I think is “awesome” is always subjective, of course. As kids, our artwork covered refrigerator doors, and sometimes our parents or grandparents even hung our drawings on the wall like they were museum pieces.
My drawing days are long gone, but I still get that same spark of excitement when I make artwork with my camera. I like looking for angles and lines that add depth. I like framing shots that feel balanced and maybe even tell a small story. Below are a few that speak to me.
Above, I love the lines of the eagle. The sculptor paid close attention to the detail in the feathers, and its gaze looks down toward… something. You can almost imagine what it’s watching. Then there are the lines in the ocean. This one is all over the place, but it captures the chaos of water crashing into rock. Look at the lines represented in the photo.
This shot was taken on the northern side of Oahu during our trip to Hawaii last year. I was able to walk out onto a rocky outcropping where the waves came right up and showed me their version of a body slam.
Then there are lines on a much larger scale — the kind that make a photo speak. We had just arrived on the island of Kauai. When I started planning the trip, one place kept showing up as a must‑visit: Waimea Canyon. I’ll have photos of the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific” in my book, but this shot was taken on the way there.
Every so often, an incredible vista would open up, practically demanding that I stop the car and capture it. My wife would look at me almost if to say lovingly, “We’re stoping the car again?” Yes! I think we both agreed that these stops showed us incredible glimpses. The lines of the mountain streak downward, ending in another line that creates a boundary between mountain and valley, river and rock. A new masterpiece in the making.
A Technical Lesson.
In movies, the term money shot means exactly what it sounds like. It’s the big moment — the one packed with visual effects and usually expensive to produce. Maybe it’s a massive space battle, or thousands of warriors and superheroes charging into an epic final fight.
The photo above has none of that, and it didn’t cost me a dime beyond the plane ticket. Taking shots out of a jet window is tricky because of glare and reflections, but angling the camera just right helped me pull off what I think is a pretty good money shot. This was taken as we left Oahu and island‑hopped to Kauai.
Now for a small technical lesson — one most pros already know. It’s okay to manipulate a photo a bit. Here’s an example. After I take a shot, I like to look at the image with different filters. Below is a picture of my laptop with the original photo on the screen, followed by the filter options I used to see how each one changed the feel of the moment.
Notice the suggested filters you can use. I like to click through all of them just to see the subtle differences. This is the original shot. Now let me tap Enhance and then Vivid to show how a little filtering can shift the feel of a photo.
Can you see the changes in color or depth in the details? I enjoy seeing what extra pop or sizzle a filter can add. Sometimes the difference is small. Other times, certain parts of the photo suddenly stand out in a way they didn’t before.
This is probably the closest I’ve come to giving a “lesson” on here from a hi‑tech perspective. I’m sure many of you have done similar things with your photos, but for the few who haven’t tried it, you might indulge yourself and see what filtering can do. Sometimes it’s subtle. Sometimes it brings out something you didn’t notice before.
If you want to go a little deeper than this and hone your craft, check out the article below.
I have shown you photos that zoom out and capture images on a grand scale. But for my photo in this post, let me close in on these plants. I used a dynamic filter that gave the image a bit more pizazz. These were found near Wiamya Canyon and I wanted to go for a more itimate feel. I love how the light really reflects off these wild plants.
Thanks for taking this little trip with me. It’s hard to believe, but as I type this, I created this website one week ago today. I mentioned early on that this place would be an experiment — a space to explore my writing and share some of my photography. I’ve never done a post like this before. There’s already been some growth between this site and my former blog, and one week in, I’m enjoying the experience and the experiment.
Next week, we’ll take a look at a deeper topic — one I’m familiar with both as a counselor and as a man: the journey into masculine vulnerability. If you have any suggestions or comments, I welcome all feedback. Like me, this website remains a work in progress.
Thanks for reading, and may you find a little love, peace, and grace in the moments you capture this week.
Journey Into 
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