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Is it time for the next project because the clock or calendar says it’s time, or because the work itself says it’s time? - Rick Rubin

15 years ago I was sitting in my truck with a camera outside a GameStop. It was a chilly evening and I was just a little anxious. 

I was on my first assignment for The Grand Rapids Press: Covering the midnight release of Grand Theft Auto IV. 

Before I set out, my editor Jeff Haywood gave me a bit of advice. Bring a camera, he said. It would help give context and set the scene. 

The camera was a Canon point-and-shoot with a megapixel count in the single digits. It didn’t matter. There I was, doing man-on-the-street interviews, capturing the scene and fulfilling a childhood dream. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as I scribbled thoughts into a five-subject notebook. 

That was the night everything changed.

***

Today is a little different. It’s a dreary, damp and rainy gray Friday afternoon. I’m not in a parking lot in Grand Rapids, I’m standing at my desk. In my office, at the house I bought in northwest Detroit. 

The drips and drops outside my window are just barely audible over the hum of my photo printer dutifully churning out prints. This weekend I’m exhibiting a full body of photography with a local photo organization, Composing Detroit. 

For the past three months I’ve been working on it. Picking 11 photos from roughly nine years of photography was hard in and of itself. Then came everything else. Printing proofs. Getting canvases made. Picking print sizes. Finding frames that weren’t just cheap particle board and flimsy plexiglass. 

Then printing. Lots of printing. Tweaking print dimensions for matting. Measuring. Measuring again. Tweaking again to actually get the border size I wanted. Puckering every time I hit print on a 17x22 piece of paper because I only had so many sheets left and budgets are a thing. 

Gloss or luster? What size prints should I sell? How should I price my prints? The questions I’m asking 15 years later are ones that only I can answer. As always, I’m relying on my gut. 

And I’m excited. 

What started as a way to flesh out a news story or illustrate a long-form enterprise feature has since become the primary way I express myself visually. I love photography because it’s hard. Because it challenges me to think differently about the world around me. Because watching my journey and talents progress since I intentionally picked up a camera that April night has been unbelievably rewarding. 

The first camera I bought made it easy to keep in my bag at all times: a refurbished Nikon D5300 with the 18-55mm kit lens. That was 2015. I fumbled my way around for a few years, and launched a blog to document it called Dummy With a Camera. 

It was a place for overflow that I couldn’t publish to Engadget while at trade shows and events, and gave me an outlet to write about my process. I haven’t published anything there since summer 2019, an account of my first year in Detroit. 

I signed off saying that after 12 years of scraping by as a freelance reporter I needed a break. I got one in ways I would’ve never expected. And after lots of thinking and lots of therapy, I realized my old blog didn’t suit me anymore. The name especially. I just wasn’t sure where or when to start.

Turns out a deadline is still the easiest way to motivate me. 

I’m still dabbling in journalism, but for the most part my day to day writing is in service of someone else and isn’t an expression of myself. B2B training materials don’t leave much room for creativity. So, that’s what Plain Sight is for.

I’d much rather grow an audience here than rely on Instagram as the primary means of publishing my art. I’d also much rather write with a physical keyboard than my iPhone. 

What you see today is the minimum viable product version of Plain Sight Photo. Planned updates include a store for fine-art prints and additional galleries. I’m also working on a project in Unreal Engine that’s a first-person interactive photo gallery. 

I don’t know what the next 15 year will bring. Since that April night I’ve photographed governors, CEOs, heads of state and some of my favorite artists. I’ve grown in countless ways creatively and personally. 

What comes next is anyone’s guess.