07/22/2026
The keys don’t work anymore. Neither did I, for a while.
After two years of feeling creatively stuck, I told myself it was a phase, that I was just exploring still life, working out ideas in the studio where the light and the subject stayed still and predictable. Some of that was true. Some of it was avoidance. Somewhere in there I stopped trusting myself with a camera pointed at another person, and I didn’t examine why for a long time.
I kept working, small controlled scenes where nothing could surprise me. It was safe. It was also not why I picked up a camera in the first place.
Then I was invited to the lavender fields at Pingles Farm, and found an old upright piano sitting in the rows. The keys still moved under a hand but made no sound.
My daughter agreed to model again, and I posed her at the keyboard, hands on silent keys, because that’s what the last two years have felt like. Going through the motions of something I loved, waiting to hear it again.
The piano is silent. That’s the point. This is a picture of trying again before you know if the sound will come back.
I don’t know yet if this is the start of something or one good afternoon in the middle of a longer quiet stretch. But for the first time in two years, I wanted to find out. This image is the first time in a long while that I felt like a photographer instead of someone who used to be one.
Thank you to Pingles Farm for the invitation, and to my daughter for stepping back in front of the lens with me.
Color Toning: .thecurious actions by (Femme Fatale, Nostalgia, Once Upon A Time, and Twilight)
Camera: Canon R5
