Presence

Photography is presence practiced, and heck, you don’t even need a camera to do that.

People talk about being present like it’s some advanced skill you have to download, or buy at an outdoor gear shop, or practice on a mat. Out here, it’s a lot simpler and a whole lot lazier than that.

Being present means you finally stop hauling your head around. Most of the time, your body is standing on a sidewalk in Vega or leaning against a truck fender in Amarillo, but your brain is three counties away—worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet or replaying some dumb thing you said in 2005. You’re everywhere except where your boots are.

When you actually show up, though—when you let your thoughts catch up to your body—things get real quiet, real fast. You notice the way the light hits a rusted stock tank. You hear the gravel crunching under your heel. You realize the wind is blowing forty miles an hour and you’re the only thing within a mile dumb enough to be moving.

That’s all the camera was ever doing anyway. It wasn’t about making art or chasing some grand composition. It was just a mechanical excuse to stop walking and look at a drainage ditch long enough for it to actually register.

You don’t need a 5D Mark II for it, and you sure don’t need a reason.

Instead, you stand there like an old grain elevator, letting the weather hit you square in the face until you stop thinking about yourself entirely. And once you stop thinking about yourself, you finally fit in with the landscape.

At the end of the day, these pictures are just a bunch of findings collected from that time. Couldn’t exactly tell you why—just gathered them up, I guess to have something to look at, or maybe a little footnote telling us to go outside and touch some ground.