The Poet

As a trip approaches, expectations run rampant across the landscape of our minds- what we will see, how we will feel, what the people and places will impart to us. After countless journeys across a world so broad, the one thing I know with certainty is that these trips will not only defy those expectations, they will always exceed them. Our explorations of the Mayan coast and jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula proved this truth time and time again.

Whenever we travel, we are exposed to such newness, avalanches of information, new ideas, connections, and perspectives. Oftentimes, it takes some distance from the experience to incorporate so much novelty and meaning. On this journey, however, there were moments that seemed to stand still in time, moments where I felt the lessons integrating almost instantly, seeping into the deepest crevices of memory and meaning.

‘The Poet’ was created in a moment just like that. About halfway though our journey, road weary and moving like skipped stones from experience to experience, I wandered out onto a beach, facing the vast Atlantic, to take a moment away from the conversation and chaos of the gathering inside. This night was a full moon, and the cold light washed over the water and stones, while the wind whipped past, driving crashing waves into the ragged shoreline. It was dark, save for the moonlight, but my instinct as an image maker told me how bright this scene would be if I left my shutter open for 30 seconds. This timeframe would also smooth the water into silk, would reveal the details of millions of years of erosion along the stone strewn shore, and would create a composition that touched upon my deepest obsessions- the physics of time, space, and light to which we owe our very existence.

I did not see the poet on the rock. The only reason I know he was even there is the evidence I have in this image. Only with time was his presence revealed, the secret observer, who, somehow, was held still by the universe, transfixed by the full moon, for the duration of this single exposure. Looking closely, he even held a knowing smile, as time turned the dim moon into a blazing wash of sunlight.

These are the sorts of images that make all others worth it. In my work, I seek to be a silent observer. My shots are candid, unstaged, moments that allow the world to reveal itself without my interference. I love the world as it is, untouched, just witnessed, held in respect and awe, a slice of amber holding love, loss, pain, glory, and the infinity of this great expanse of life.

As I continued making images along the shoreline, my travel companions began to wander towards me, surrounding me, watching the exposures leap from the screen when the time expired, encouraging me and sharing in the awe of the painted moonlit scene. Sam. Summer. Defaced. Fahad. Liam. Lorenzo. A moment of solace turned to a moment of deep connection, the waves pulled more sand from the shore, and when we looked at the next frame together, The Poet was gone.

I knew in this instant that this was the work I would commit to the blockchain- and though I took hundreds of pictures after this, The Poet never left my mind, his smile, secret to himself, frozen in time, under an impossibly bright sky, as the water moved the world beneath him.