Why I Built the Inspiration Series

I remember looking up at a hawk against the indigo sky, gold grass glinting overhead as it blew in the spring westerlies. My daughter snug against my side. A moment of wonder. Momentary.

We had just come running, crashing, hide-and-seeking through thick grass at our local West Marin open space, which at that moment was way over my head. Laughing, gleeful, we finally fell into a tiny clearing you couldn’t have spotted from ten feet away. That’s when we both looked up and went quiet.

That grass is only so tall for a couple weeks most years — less if the rain comes early, or late, or not enough. Some years it won’t even happen, and no matter the year, if you aren’t watching closely, you miss it.

I keep a list of things like that. On notepads, in journals, on my phone, anywhere. The two weeks in 2026 the grass was tall enough to disappear into. The magic conditions when tide and wind and seas aligned to forage and cook mussels on the beach. That sunset from Mt. Tam where the sun set directly behind the Farallons.

I wouldn’t call it research — it’s so disorganized I’ll likely never reference it. It’s more a ritual in paying attention.

The Quick Answer

The Inspiration Series is a library of pre-designed, place-based photo experiences, built from everything I’ve experienced and learned and handed over so you can use it too.

For most experiences, that means everything’s already decided — the season, the timing, the plan. Follow the guidelines, show up, easy.

For the bigger ones — the multi-day, further-out experiences — it means I’ve built a framework in partnership with the right guides and outfitters, and I help bring it to life alongside them.

Every experience also carries a category, an effort rating, and a suggested medium, so you know exactly what you’re signing up for before you book it. If you want to know how I use those, keep going.

How to Use It

What This Isn’t

This isn’t a Custom Lifestyle Session. Custom starts from a call and gets built around your life from scratch — your home, your timing, your wardrobe, an optional planning call, all of it collaborative from the first conversation. The Inspiration Series starts with something I’ve already crafted. You’re not commissioning something new. You’re picking from something finished.

Category & Effort

Category is the broad shape — Roadside (steps from the car), Outing (a real walk, half a morning), or Adventure (a bigger commitment, sometimes overnight).

Underneath that is the specific number: physical effort, rated one through ten. Here’s the scale:

1. Effortless. A stroll through a garden, think Conservatory of Flowers. Walk in, walk out.
2. Very Easy. A flat beach walk near the parking lot.
3. Easy. A shaded loop through redwoods on a maintained path. No more than a mile total.
4. Low to Moderate. Tidepooling with a rocky trail to the beach and wading on uneven rock. Wet shoes guaranteed.
5. Moderate. A 2-3 mile coastal trail with 500 feet of elevation gain & exposure to wind.
6. Moderate to Hard. A couple of hours kayaking on Tomales Bay. Could flat & easy, could get choppy and be hard work!
7. Hard. Climbing Mt. Barnabe. Or an overnight backpack trip in Point Reyes with kids (this would be a 5 without the kids 😂).
8. Very Hard. 3 days backpacking in the Sierra with your family.
9. Gnarly. Multi-day whitewater rafting with the family, days on the water back to back, real commitment once you put in.
10. Unreasonable. You join a guided trip up Mt. Rainier with your teenager. I hold a camera and try to keep up.

Suggested Medium

Each experience also flags a suggested medium, film or digital. Not a rule but a starting recommendation, based on the light and pace of that specific hour. Fast-moving kids in flat morning light call for something different than a still, quiet moment at sundown.

Video

Some experiences offer a video add-on — a short cinematic piece shot alongside the stills, made in collaboration with my filmmakers Louis and Sean. It’s flagged as available for a given experience when it makes sense, not built into all of them.

Beta Sessions

I am always dreaming up new Inspiration Sessions — that’s the point. I love that this is a space where I can try new ideas and bring new visions to life. Beta Sessions makes that process transparent. Anything with a “Beta” flag is brand new, still being refined, and probably doesn’t have photos from a real session yet. I offer these as collaborations, and they’re substantially discounted.

Why Not Just Tell People

I considered just publishing a list. “How to Find Tall Grass in Marin.” Rain charts, observations, an estimated date that’s probably changed by the time someone reads it. I could do the same for “Timing Good Light for Portraits in the Redwoods” or “My Favorite Redwood Campsites Near Samuel P. Taylor.”

But the internet is full of these guidebook blogs, and I personally get overwhelmed by the quantity. Each has something different to say, and I inevitably feel some FOMO and can’t decide which to follow — and which to ignore.

So instead of publishing the list, I turned each item on it into something bookable. You don’t have to read a wordy blog post, digest everything, and then synthesize the relevant pieces into a game plan. Instead you just book the experience and move on with your day.

Sundown in the Tall Grass exists because that window kept closing on people who never knew to look for it. Same logic behind the tide-timed mussel session, a Mt. Tam sunset, all of it. The category, the effort rating, the suggested medium — none of that is inventory for its own sake. It’s what makes a personal, messy list of observations usable by someone who isn’t me.

Collaborations

The part I’m most excited about right now is a second list, kept right alongside the places: knowledgeable people.

Foragers, naturalists, sailors — the people who’ve spent decades paying attention to one stretch of coast or one particular skill. Marin has more of them than you’d think, and most families never get introduced.

That list is turning into actual plans faster than I expected.

A foraging experience is in the works right now with a guide who knows this coast better than almost anyone — walking the tideline, pulling something out of the water or off a bluff, cooking it, photographing the whole thing.

A daysailing experience on Tomales Bay is in the oven too, with someone who was born and raised on Tomales.

Neither of those is something I could build alone, and that’s the point of bringing them in.

Big Adventures

On the horizon is another big stepping stone for the Inspiration Series, built the same way as the collaborations above — alongside real outfitters and guides who run the technical parts, not instead of them.

Picture a family a few days into the Middle Fork of the Salmon, an outfitter running the water and the logistics — shoulders sore from paddling, kids falling into that state of natural awareness that only extended journeys bring about.

Or three days into the Trinity Alps with a guide leading the route, foraged mushrooms going in a pan over the coals, everyone quiet, the afternoon thunderclouds dissipating into another crystal-clear summer night.

These “expeditions” aren’t bookable yet — partly because the right partnerships aren’t locked in yet either. But it’s the same idea as the tall grass, just scaled up: something I’m building toward. Just takes a little longer to get there.

The Pictures We Make

Funny — I haven’t yet said much about photography. And that’s my part in all this. But this isn’t a chicken-or-egg scenario. The experience is where an Inspiration Session begins.

After 6+ years photographing families in San Francisco and Marin, and three of those as a dad, I’ve learned to see photography as a way to heighten our experiences.

It’s like salt on food. Salt gets old very quickly when you eat it by the spoonful. And the beans and rice I just cooked would have been pretty boring without it. Salt is nothing without food, just like photos are nothing without the experience.

But the food isn’t something you’ll remember without a little salt. Intentional photos are what keep an experience vibrant in your family’s collective history for years to come.

I have a few snapshots of my daughter in that grass. None from that day we looked up at the hawk together. But close enough that they will always bring me right back to that moment we had looking up at the indigo sky, tall grass overhead. The window itself is gone within a couple weeks every year. The pictures make it something we share all year.