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James House Pix 2007

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2007, I had to leave San Francisco behind. I was in a dark, painful place, fighting the heaviest battle of my life trying to get over substance use. It was a terrifyingly hard time, and if I’m honest, I knew where I was headed if things didn't change. If my family had turned their backs on me, I wouldn't be here today. Plain and simple. They saved my life. Instead of rejecting me, they opened the doors to the James House in Carlsbad. It was built by a beautiful woman Joyce James with so much care, and it was filled with the most important people in my world: my sister, her husband Chris, their daughter Payton, and my mom who flew in to be motherly. When I had nowhere left to turn, they wrapped me in unconditional love and gave me a safe harbor to heal. During those long days of recovery, picking up my camera became a way to anchor myself. Focusing on photography,,, mindfully lining up shots using the rule of thirds, tracking the way the soft Carlsbad sunlight moved across a roo...
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Astrophotography from the Deck: my La Paloma Observatory

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  When people think of astrophotography, they usually picture someone trekking out to a remote desert or a pitch-black mountain peak, miles away from civilization. But for me, the gateway to the cosmos was right outside my door—on my deck when I lived in North Park, San Diego. Instead of backyard astrophotography, mine was strictly  on-deck astrophotography . I lovingly dubbed my setup  La Paloma Observatory . Shooting from North Park came with a massive hurdle:  light pollution . Trying to pull faint planetary details or crisp lunar craters out of an urban sky saturated by city lights, streetlamps, and neighborhood glow is a serious exercise in patience. Every clear night was a battle of contrast, dialing in the exposure, and hunting for that perfect, steady pocket of air.  As the images show, you don't need a remote mountaintop to capture the wonders of the universe. A detailed, close-up shot of  Jupiter . You can clearly make out its iconic horizontal at...
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