A Quiet Fire Still Burns – July 18th, 2025
In September of 2021, I picked up my camera with intention—maybe not clear intention, but something close enough to a whisper that said, “Follow this.”
I didn’t know where it would take me.
I didn’t know who I’d meet, what I’d see, or even what I was hoping to find. But I followed anyway.
Since then, I’ve saved 8,077 photos in my Lightroom library.
184 from that first, uncertain year.
3707 in 2022—something was on fire then.
1535 in 2023.
1295 in 2024.
1349 so far this year, as of today—July 18th, 2025.
Today, I took a long, quiet look through them. All of them.
Something pulled at me—maybe it was nostalgia, maybe it was the movie I watched last night (I’ll get to that), or maybe it was that familiar creative ache that builds when I’ve gone too long without seeing through the lens, rather than just looking with it.
So I started to pull photos—just the ones that reached out. Not because they were technically perfect, but because something in them asked me to pause.
By the time I was done, I had 282 images saved to a folder on my desktop labeled:
“Blog Post – July 18th 2025.”
282 photos out of 8,077.
What made these ones different?
I wish I had a clean answer, wrapped in theory or technique.
But I don’t.
What I do know is that they caught me—some with light, some with silence, some with memory.
They felt alive in a way the others didn’t.
And here’s the part I hesitate to say—maybe out of fear, or maybe because saying it makes it real:
In those 282 images, I was reminded that I’m a decent photographer. Not brilliant. Not groundbreaking. Not award-winning. Just… decent.
But decent feels like a small victory when I realize that I create my best work only when I’m free.
Free to see.
Free to feel.
Free to move at my own pace without someone else’s metronome ticking over my shoulder.
Some of you might have noticed the drop—the plummet, really—in saved photos after 2022.
It wasn’t burnout. Not exactly.
It was constraint.
I placed myself in environments, in jobs, in rhythms that didn’t speak to the way my creative process needs to unfold.
Partly my own doing, partly the push of external tides.
But whatever the cause, I couldn’t see clearly during those stretches. I couldn’t feel clearly.
Still, the ember never went out.
I’d sneak moments in. A frame here, a quiet wander there.
Just enough to keep the connection alive.
Photography has never handed me its truths easily.
I’ve never been the kind of person to learn without friction.
So maybe the struggle was necessary. Maybe it had something to teach me—something about slowing down, about reclaiming space to breathe and see and remember why I ever picked up a camera in the first place.
Last night, I watched a film called Minamata. It moved me deeply.
There’s a line in it that struck something raw inside me:
“Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes – just sometimes – one photograph or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness.”
That line…
God, that line.
It cracked something open.
Because that’s what I want.
Not just to make something pretty or technically sound.
But to make something that moves someone.
To joy.
To stillness.
To sorrow.
To something.
I want my work to whisper—maybe even shout—at the soul.
I don’t think I’ve made that kind of photograph yet.
Not the kind that changes people, or lingers long after the image fades from view.
But I still believe it’s out there waiting for me to find it.
And I believe, stubbornly, that I still have time. That the road hasn’t ended, not yet.
So I pulled these 282 photographs for a reason.
They caught my eye, yes.
But more than that—they reminded me there’s still something inside me that needs to create, even when the world tries to dull the spark.
If you take the time to look through them, I hope you find something—however small—that stirs.
And if not, that’s okay too.
Sometimes, it’s enough just to know the fire’s still burning.
— A.H.
