08/26/2026
Through "A Wider Lens"...
What makes me and my work different?
Honestly, I’m just another blue-collar guy from South Louisiana with ADD and more hobbies than I can realistically keep up with.
But over the years, one of those hobbies has stuck with me more than the rest: photography.
More specifically, I photograph women and the female form as art—which usually isn’t what people expect from a guy like me.
Tell someone you photograph women, even if you clearly call it art, and a lot of people immediately assume you’re making something that belongs on a p**n site.
That reaction is a whole conversation of its own. But it couldn’t be further from what my work is actually about.
Let me explain.
For the last 18 years, I’ve gotten up and hit the road before sunrise. Most days, my commute has been at least an hour each way.
Anyone who has spent years doing physical work knows the toll it takes. But it doesn’t stop at your muscles and joints. Eventually, it starts working its way into your mind.
As men, we carry a constant load that most people never see. It stacks quietly, little by little, until we stop noticing how heavy it has become.
Then one day, you realize you haven’t gotten stronger—you’ve just learned how to live under the weight.
A few hours of sleep and a cup of coffee can help with the physical exhaustion. At least a little. But they don’t do much for the mental drain.
A man can be physically worn out and still find the strength to do the impossible if his mind is locked in gear. But when his mind starts slipping, everything becomes harder.
Over the years, I began to feel like all I did was work to pay bills. I worried that I would stay trapped in that rut until I was too old and burned out to do anything else.
I wanted more from life than paying bills until I died, and I knew I had to figure that out for myself.
Around that time, I read about something called cognitive diversification.
Stripped down, it means mental cross-training: intentionally using different parts of your brain to keep the whole thing strong.
Your mind needs more than one kind of workout, just like your body does. If you train only one muscle group, the imbalance eventually shows.
Skip leg day long enough and everybody can tell.
Creative work—the “artsy” stuff—is mental leg day.
At work, I spend most of my time planning, analyzing, estimating, reviewing, and executing. Those thought processes have to be rigid. There are right answers and wrong answers. Things work, or they don’t.
To balance that, I need something subjective, expressive, and fluid—something driven by perception and intuition instead of rules and precision.
For some men, the idea of doing something based on feeling is hard to lock in on.
After all, feelings don’t pay the bills, right?
Bu****it.
We’ve been told our entire lives that being a provider means sacrificing every other part of who we are for the people who depend on us.
I don’t believe that anymore.
Making time for your mental leg day doesn’t take you away from your responsibilities. It helps keep you strong enough to continue carrying them without losing yourself in the process.
We can’t stay in the same gear, spinning the wheels until the tank runs dry.
Sometimes you need something that lets your mind drop into four-wheel drive and climb out of the rut.
Photography does that for me.
But it doesn’t have to be a camera for you.
It might be a paintbrush, a blacksmith’s hammer, a guitar, a pen and paper, or a keyboard. What matters is finding something that lets you use the creative part of your mind and make something from nothing.
That creative work becomes a counterweight to the rest of your life.
Instead of only watching your paycheck disappear into someone else’s pocket, you leave behind something tangible. Something you made. Something that didn’t exist before you put your hands and mind to it.
If you can make money doing it, great.
But don’t let money be the measurement you use to decide whether something is worth your time.
If it never makes you a dime but brings peace, purpose, or balance into your life, it is worth your time.
My job keeps the lights on.
My art keeps the fire burning.
It gives me something I can look back on and say:
“I did that.”
In my next post, we’re going to dig deeper into the “why” behind my work—why photography has stayed with me when so many other hobbies haven’t, and why learning to view the female form with dignity may be one of the most rebellious things a man can do in a world that has forgotten how to see.
