On The Right Path

Whelp, now that my meltdown is over—at least for the time being—I guess it’s about time for me and my posts to get back to some sense of normalcy. Whatever that even means.

This post is the first one pulling from content I created back in 2025, which I’m legitimately happy about, and looking forward to sharing. It’ll be a little lighter on the written-word side, but still packed with a good dose of imagery.

Thankfully, I held myself a little more accountable in ’25 and used my camera more than the year before—by about a thousand photos or so. That’s still not the level I’m aiming for in 2026, but it’s at least a step (albeit a small one) in the right direction. What’s the saying—the smallest steps help complete the grandest journeys? In this case, though, it’s both steps and shutter clicks. You get my drift, hopefully.

I did travel a good amount last year, both for work and for family trips. That certainly helped keep my camera out of its case and resulted in more opportunities to create and capture things to share. It also resulted in more images winding up in the digital recycle bin, so to speak, because I put so much pressure on myself to shoot—regardless of what was going on or where I was—that I sometimes struggled to turn an idea into a final product I was happy with. (When I say struggled, I mean struggled.)

I try not to delete many images, since I like to dissect what went wrong in a given moment and see how I’ve grown and adapted as a photographer. Still, some images are just destined to become digital waste and be erased for all time.

Anyway, enough rambling. Let’s wrap this up and get to the images and a brief overview.

This series is from a hike I took with my oldest kiddo at the beginning of last year, near the house. Given that it was just the two of us spending quality time together, I didn’t feel it was appropriate to take notes or come up with some storyline that would’ve taken away from the outing. My oldest was just starting to get into photography at the time, so I was also helping explain settings and so forth. I guess that in and of itself could’ve been a storyline, though that only dawned on me as I was wrapping up this post.

Enjoy!
—Tyler