“So you want to be poor then, huh?”
That was a typical response when I told someone I wanted to major in photography in college, building on the enjoyment and success I had in high school photography courses and contests. I needed to get a “real” degree and get a “real” job – not chase my childhood dream of wanting to be a National Geographic photographer (I also wanted to be a marine biologist, a racecar driver, a doctor, a…well, you get the point).
So, I did what was expected of me, packed up my 6.1 megapixel Nikon D50 and began my college experience as a mechanical engineering major who ended up falling in love with the human mind and psychology, and graduating with a degree in clinical psych (joke’s on me – apparently people think psychology isn’t a real degree, either. Whatever).
After graduation, I did the whole adult thing – I got a “real job”, moved across the country, and got pretty damn good at sales and working with people. Photography fizzled away as life got busy, and that old Nikon (which by this point has been surpassed by even the cheapest cell phone cameras) collected dust.
Fast forward to 2020. I got married to my wonderful wife Cat on Feb 18th – yay! And then the next month, the world started to shut down as COVID spread far and wide.
We all know what comes next – in fact, we’re all still there. Needless to say, I think the pandemic made a lot of us started to re-evaluate our priorities – to think about what we were most passionate about in this life. Creating. Expression. Photography. I could almost hear the old Nikon calling for me from somewhere in my closet (just kidding; that would be unnerving and I would have never touched a camera again).
But not just photography – nature photography. As an adult who began to spend a lot of time outside hiking, fishing, and kayaking, I developed a fiery passion for the environment, and protecting it (you can thank hippie-dippy Seattle for that – shoutout to my 206 peeps). I learned more and more about how our planet is changing, and what roles we as humans play those changes. And I realized that we are not doing NEARLY enough to speak up for a planet that has no voice of its own.
All this leads us here. I dove back into photography, and have made it my mission to use it to capture the magnificent beauty that exists on this planet, make the case for why it is worth protecting, and spread awareness as best as I can on what we can do to help.
Future blog and photo posts will tell a story, and hopefully will be educational. My hope is to be able to grow as a photographer and over time do a better, more thorough job of documenting what our #OnePlanet has to offer us today, and why we need to make sure it can offer us this, and more, well into the future. We only get one of these – #OnePlanet.
I am just one person; I’m not going to protect the planet with some words and photos. But when I think about the scale of the challenge in front of us, I think about these few bars from Oddisee, a hip hop artist who puts on a hell of a live show (shoutout to The Crocodile in downtown Seattle – your venue is straight vibes):
“I’ma help the people close to me
They help the people close to them, and then hopefully
Friends of their friends, friends heed the notion, we
Started of locally, now it’s changed globally.”
So, what do ya say? Will you be a part of my journey to help forward the #OnePlanet Mission? Please consider helping – whether it be sharing this website to friends and family, subscribing to my blog below, or donating to help me keep growing as a photographer, any and all support is appreciated. Thank you, #OnePlanet Fam – I look forward to this ride!
-jo
Photography collection and blog 