Every photographer has the one that got away. The frame you saw and felt but did not take because the camera was at home. That regret does not fade. It taught me the only rule I actually keep. The camera comes with me.

Photography is the outlet, but it is also the engine. It pulls me out the door, shapes where I travel, and feeds the work I do the rest of the week. I am not after the staged or the perfect. I want the real thing as I find it, in the mountains or three blocks from home. The moment was already there. My job is to notice it in time.

I shot Canon for years, a 5D Mark III I loved and hauled everywhere. In 2018 I moved to a Fuji, a mirrorless body light enough to actually stay on my shoulder. That sounds like a gear note. It is really a philosophy. The camera that is with you is the only one that takes the picture.

So. The one that got away.

After a night of storms I woke before sunrise to fish with my father. The lake was dead calm, a heavy fog sitting just above the water. We walked out to the dock and there it was. A hand-carved wooden canoe, full of rain, floating inches above the waterline, not quite sunk. Fog, still water, and that small wooden boat holding on. I did not have the frame that morning. I have carried the camera ever since.