Lessons Learned In A Coffee Shop

Life is better when you clean up after your own self.

Put Dirty Dishes Here, Blanchard’s Coffee Shop | Richmond, Virginia | September 2025

Sugar and salt are essential.

Salt and Coconut Sugar, Hohl Cafe | Williamsburg, Virginia | September 2025

Pumpkins, like people come in many varieties. Welcome them all.

Pumpkins at Hohl Cafe | Williamsburg, Virginia | September 2025

Try not to take life (or yourself) too seriously. Laugh whenever you can.

Cartoon, ARC Thrift Shop | Hanover, Virginia | September 2025

Wounds Are Soothed

I had to return to the orthopedist for a repeat x-ray of my wrist and thumb. Good news, no fracture. Less good news, significant sprain. I’ll need to allow time for the ligaments to heal and that means limiting how often and how long I lift a heavy camera and lens. I think to myself, this injury is no match for my determination (or my stubborn nature). As if by divine intervention, when I went to take pictures today, I discovered I had left the memory card at home, still in the card reader attached to the desktop computer. Oh, well. I took a few iPhone photos on this rainy day and realized with great joy that I can practice this lovely way of seeing regardless of the tool in hand. The wounds from my fall are soothed. By the lightness of the camera. And the ease of the work.

Rainy Day, September 2025

Organically Obsessed

This is a feeling I love: being organically obsessed with something and sharing that feeling with someone else. Especially, when it’s someone who “gets it” (and by extension, gets me). I want to swap secrets and bond over mutual infatuations with things like taking pictures of cantaloupe or left over orange slices. That is, how to make pictures on those days when you don’t go anywhere or do anything that is even remotely interesting. And yet, still, this is the day you are presented with. And if you are like me, you are happy when someone tags along with you while you pick up fruit from the grocery store or gas the car or stop by the library. I am not trying to convince you that this is fine art or some high-brow endeavor. Instead, I am sharing an honest reflection of what it feels like to be alive today.

Sugar Kiss Cantaloupe, September 2025

Citrus Peels, September 2025

Nature Style

I am not a nature photographer, but when nature comes to live in and around my own home, I take notice. I do not own a macro lens and that style of photography isn’t really my thing, so I had to do a bit of scrambling to figure out how to best photograph the katydid and the moth in the natural setting of our front porch. This kind of experimentation feels like play, and working with creative constraints often brings out the best in me (not just technically but also emotionally, allowing me to celebrate what I can do even when things are not perfect).

Katydid on Front Porch Window Screen, September 2025

Sharing an excerpt from a new favorite non-fiction book, Nature Style: Cultivating wellbeing at home with plants, by Alana Langan & Jacqui Vidal (photography by Annette O’Brien).

Most people don’t need convincing to get out in nature. Without even realising it, we’re inherently drawn to the natural world. That’s biophilia.

The word ‘biophilia’ was first introduced in the 1960s by social psychologist Erich Fromm and later popularised by biologist Edward Osborne Wilson in his 1984 book, Biophilia. Wilson explored the theory that humans have an innate desire to connect with other forms of life; a deep-seated affinity with the natural world that has built up over the course of human evolution. Biophilia can be summed up as an intuitive love of life and living systems.

Biophilia encourages us to slow down and pay attention to our surroundings. Maybe you can smell wisteria on the breeze through an open window, or feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. Perhaps you can hear a chorus of birdsong outside, or notice the calming effects of a walk in the forest. In its multitude of forms, biophilia soothes us deep within.