#25 - One weird trick to take better photos instantly!

The secret photography tip they don't want you to know...

Time flows through a camera in ways both obvious and subtle. There’s exposure time, of course—those fractions of seconds or long minutes when light paints itself across glass. But every press of the shutter is also a small act of defiance against impermanence.

I think about this most often in the liminal hours, when the light is soft and strange. Recently, I watched my son and daughter pulling a sled across fresh snow in Druid Hill Park. Their footprints left a meandering trail, and the late afternoon sun turned the snow-covered slopes into a canvas of warm light. I took a photo.

Olive pulling Felix in the snow. Druid Hill Park. 2025.

The shutter snapped, freezing them forever at ages 12 and 3, in front of a decades-old ash tree, on a hill unknowably older, bathed in winter light. In that fraction of a second, I preserved something that would never exist again—the precise angle of the sun, the length of those shadows, the shared joy on their faces as they moved through the snow.

Photography is writing with light, but it’s also a dialogue with time.

Left: Cait photographing in a field in 2013. Right: Cait photographing in a field in 2023.

There's an urgency to this kind of understanding. Every time I raise my camera, I must be aware that I am documenting something that won't exist in its current state tomorrow. That vibrant mural might be painted over next week. That old oak tree might fall in the next storm. That expression of joy on a stranger's face is fleeting. The world is constantly rewriting itself, and so photographs become both celebration and evidence of what is and what was.

This photo I took in 2008 is not the kind of photo I would take in 2025. But it’s interesting to me for exactly that reason. It says a lot about where my mind was at 22. It’s also interesting, because the Baltimore skyline has changed considerably since this photo was taken.

And yet, this awareness of impermanence sharpens rather than dulls the experience. Each photograph is a small rebellion against entropy—an insistence that this moment, this scene, this fragment of life matters enough to preserve. When I press the shutter, I'm not just recording light. I'm saying “this existed, this was here, this is how I saw it, and this mattered.”

This mural in Greenfield, SC felt absolutely critical to photograph. I think about this photo at least once a month. I had to stop the car to shoot it. I don’t regret photographing this, despite the poor light. I would regret it forever if I hadn’t taken it.

Everything we encounter in this world is like Theseus' ship—perpetually shifting, evolving, transforming. Each photograph freezes one moment in this metamorphosis: this interplay of light and shadow; this arrangement of forms; my wife before she was my wife, standing in a field with camera in hand at age 23; my wife, six years into our marriage, kneeling in a different field in a different state, camera raised, age 33. An echo of an echo. Our images are artifacts of countless such iterations, each one proof of a singular existence before its inevitable dissolution. What draws me isn't simply the transformation itself, but how these layers of past and present overlap—and what they reveal about those who pause to witness them.

Captain TC’s jewelry. Monterey, CA. I’ll probably never be in Monterey again. I’ll probably never see Captain TC again. If I hadn’t taken the opportunity to make this photo in 2022, it never would have come again.

This is the truth about making photographs that matter: urgency. Each moment exists in a state of constant dissolution. The light will shift, walls will crumble, signs will fade, and that infant’s face will soon be that of a teenager. Even you—what draws your eye, how you see, what moves you to raise the camera—will change with time. Recognizing this impermanence should drive your work. When something calls to you, when a scene or detail catches your attention, don’t wait. Don’t say, “maybe tomorrow” or “when the light is better.”

Footprints in snow. Baltimore, MD. 2022. I thought about waiting for more dramatic light to photograph this scene. They melted away an hour later.

To be a better photographer, you must shoot with the understanding that now is the only time you have. And then you must do this over and over and over until you die.

That’s the one weird trick.

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The intro music is "Mana Two - Part 1" by Kevin MacLeod
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

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