Public Lands

This is an adaptation of my weekly newsletter, Adventures Big & Small. If you want to receive emails like these, click here to subscribe.

Yesterday was Public Lands Day—a date that probably goes unnoticed for many. Honestly, it would have for me too, if not for a reminder email from the National Forest Foundation.

But this year, with the very real and ongoing collapse of conservation in our country, it struck me how deeply my work is tied to public lands.

Most of my sessions take place in national or state parks and recreation areas: Lands End, Golden Gate Park, the Marin Headlands. At the core of what I do is your family’s connection to these spaces. If sweeping vistas with little sign of human presence didn’t appeal to you, I’d need a different portfolio. In fact, I might not even have a job.

The fact that you keep hiring me is proof—we care about these places.
I don’t often bring politics into this space (not because I’m afraid, just a little tired), but I can’t separate my work from it. My photography celebrates public lands and open spaces. These are places that matter so much to us and our families that we frame photos of them for our walls.

I won’t tell you which bill to support or which official to call. Instead, I want to remind you visually: every image I share here was made on public land. The backdrop to your family’s story is, more often than not, land that belongs to all of us.

Let’s make sure it always does.