precursor to a career break
The first part of this series described a creative shift toward music during recent years, moving toward audio. I wanted to mention this because though it does not in any way supplant photography for me, it did become my main method of creative exploration for a number of years. Also, I went over some tough professional decisions that brought me to a counterintuitive opportunity…repeated rejection. The second part of this series focuses on that rejection and the decision to move on in my own way.
I had been searching for other positions prior to leaving my last job, but hadn’t had any luck. This wasn’t a total surprise to me–I had come to engineering by means of slipping in via a chance from a friend to work as a technician, then working very hard and leveling up by using all kinds of creative problem solving experience that I gained from other non-adjacent fields, living in other cultures, and a lifetime of self-taught skills that I have refined in my creative work (for example, I taught myself various skills to build websites so I could make and customize this site). I didn’t expect to have people chasing me down, but after months of non-responses and rejection, I decided what I was doing was not getting me anywhere–and I needed to take a step in another direction.
clarity and forward movement
In April of 2025 I bought a one-way ticket to Vietnam, a country I visited once in 2015 while living in Taiwan. I needed to renew myself. In Saigon I quickly got lost on purpose, which is my preferred method of trying to understand and learn a city. During mornings and periods of nice afternoon light I would walk through the streets, observing and photographing the culture from an sociological and anthropological viewpoint. Daily logistical efforts such as waste disposal, recycling separation, the lives lottery ticket sellers and fruit stall owners enthralled me. Trying to understand the different realizations of the same high-level processes we have in our societies, from an open, non-judgmental point of view (because many are handled very differently) became important to me.
In Saigon, I watched many levels of garbage collection and separation unfold before city trash collectors even arrived. Part of this must be influenced by socioeconomics, but also there seemed to be people (particularly elders) who simply found a purpose and routine in collecting the cardboard or metals from nearby neighborhoods. I don’t speak Vietnamese, and my observation was informal, but I tried photographically to document many different levels of these processes, via a street photography ethos of pure observation and non-interaction. This is one of many themes I focused while navigating through different societies on this trip. Other themes include public transportation/transport style in general, the dichotomy of megacities and their rural counterparts, technology omnipresence, …and even less serious themes like the nearly stylish matching outfits that Vietnamese aunties wear.
Eventually I shifted to the mountains and jungles to focus on dragonfly and nature photography. I traveled many amazingly beautiful natural areas around Vietnam, then to Thailand into rainforests and massive national parks, as well as a few nice spots in Taiwan. During this trip, I documented over 125 species (currently still going through the photographers) of dragonflies in situ, in technical-aesthetic style. Around 100 species were species that I had never seen before, despite already having spent time exploring parts of Southeast Asia. The large increase in species count was due to more in-depth exploration, as well as visiting many new (and more unique habitats) than I had been able to go to on previous occasions.
My trajectory periodically oscillated between cities and nature, depending on how I was feeling, the immediate weather (harder to explore the jungle in major storms), opportunities to see coffee farms or meet interesting people in new places. This really mimicked my attitude of exploration and constant renewal through new environments.
If you have been to this website before (or if you know me), you know most of the creative work I post has been a mixture of street photography and nature photography (both insect and ambient-abstract nature images). Those are two of my biggest passions–completely opposite realms, disparate styles–but through the same medium of photography. I approach both subject matters differently, and reap all kinds of tangential benefits while pursuing them, because they are really just me capturing images from environments and places that I love existing in and observing. In Vietnam I wrote a deeper analysis while trying to understand my own fascinations more, which I will share later due to the growing length of this update.
actualization and update on work from trip
In this decision to travel to Southeast Asia and be completely open to whatever happened, with little expectation, I felt better than I have possibly in my entire life. I have been on many adventures…but this time I felt the most aligned with myself, felt the most like myself, felt more open, resilient, more compassionate and less judgmental (even with myself) than ever before. Back on the other side of the world now, I am going through the photographic work and assembling the projects, which I will share here. In the meantime, I have also been sharing some of the street photography work on Brian Gooding on instagram.