The Morning Photowalk
Conversations About Photography, Art, and Seeing
Photography has always given me a reason to slow down and pay attention. Sometimes that means walking familiar streets early in the morning. Other times it means returning to an old photograph and wondering why I stopped to make it in the first place.
The Morning Photowalk is a place for those stories — conversations about photographs, projects, places, art, light, history, and the things that make us stop and point a camera.
Sometimes those stories will be told through audio, sometimes through photographs or writing, and occasionally through video. There may even be a camera involved from time to time, but only when it has something to do with the story.
Mostly, this is about why we make photographs — and what photography teaches us to notice.
What Makes Me Stop?
It All Begins Here
After nearly three years away from recording The Morning Photowalk, I grabbed a camera, clipped on a microphone, and went for a walk through my hometown of Manteno, Illinois.
I didn't have a topic planned. I just wanted to photograph whatever caught my attention and talk about photography along the way.
What emerged was a conversation about noticing.
Why do we stop for one thing and walk past another? Why can an ordinary street, an old building, a discarded drink, or a particular patch of morning light suddenly feel worth photographing?
Along the way, I found myself thinking about photographs of my son, places that have changed, the photographs we don't understand until years later, and why the camera itself matters far less to me today than it once did.
Sometimes a photograph doesn't need to be important when we make it. Maybe its meaning comes later.
Maybe our job is simply to notice — and document some things while we're here.