And The Emmy Goes To:

Back in May, I told a friend I’d move to LA on my birthday. I didn’t know how I was going to make that happen. It was just something I said out loud, hoping I’d eventually figure out the logistics.

Then, on my birthday, I moved to LA. New city. New job. Fourteen days later, I was at the Emmys wearing a tux for the first time.

A fairly good occasion to start, although Los Angeles could have turned the heat down a little. I’d imagined feeling like James Bond. Mostly, I was wondering whether everyone else was this sweaty and just better at hiding it.

Years ago, when I was at Prime Video, I worked on Manchester by the Sea and was invited to attend the Oscars with the marketing team. But there were things happening with my family, and being away didn’t feel right. I stayed home.

I still thought about that night over the years. I knew why I’d stayed, but I also knew how much I’d wanted to go.

So standing at the Emmys, barely two weeks after moving here, meant something. Back in May, I hadn’t even known how I’d get to LA. Now I was adjusting a bow tie and getting my camera ready on a red carpet.

Having a camera helped. It gave me something to do with my hands and a reason to look closely: a quick laugh, a breath between interviews, the little moments around the moment everyone came to see.

I was there to work, but I was also the person who’d said something hopeful to a friend back in May. I tried to give him a minute to take it in.

Then I went back to sweating.

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Sometimes the Best Photo Is the One You Never Get to See

I lost one of my rolls of film from the Silverstone paddock.

On it was a portrait of Charles Leclerc that I made the day before he won the British Grand Prix. At least I think it was. That's the funny thing about losing film—you start questioning your own memory. Did I actually advance the roll? Was that on a different camera? I'm pretty sure it was there.

I was more upset than I expected. Maybe it was because I'd been carrying cameras around for four days in the July heat. Maybe it was because I knew there was no backup. Digital lets you lose files. Film lets you lose moments. Or at least that's what I thought.

I was there with AWS, filming throughout the weekend with access to the paddock and even the starting grid. I didn't realize until I got there how rare that opportunity actually is. You can't buy a ticket for it. You're standing in the middle of one of the biggest sporting events in the world, trying to remember that this is somebody else's normal Tuesday.

One of my favorite parts of the weekend wasn't even on track. I spent time photographing Ruth Buscombe behind the scenes as she prepared for race-day coverage, watching her work through the mountain of AWS data that eventually becomes the analysis millions of people watch on TV. Seeing that side of Formula 1 reminded me how many people are working long before the lights ever go out.

Charles didn't have to stop for me. It was one of the busiest weekends of his year, there were people pulling him in every direction, and somehow he still gave me thirty seconds. I remember lifting the camera, hearing the shutter, thanking him, and watching him disappear back into the paddock.

The next day he won.

Watching him stand on the top step somehow made the whole interaction feel even sweeter. It felt deserved. Somewhere during the race I realized I wasn't actually mourning the image. I was mourning the idea that I'd lost the memory.

But I hadn't.

Looking back now, that's what stayed with me. Not the photograph. The feeling. The conversations in the paddock. Watching people at the very top of their craft, whether they were behind the wheel, behind a camera, or behind a laptop making sense of millions of data points.

Maybe that's one of the things film teaches you. Not every frame survives. Not every roll comes back. Sometimes the photograph only exists in your head, and sometimes that's enough.

The photos below are the ones that did make it home, shot on Kodak 250D, Gold 200, and Kodak Double-X. Looking through them now, I don't really think about the frame I lost anymore.

Turns out the best photograph from Silverstone might be the one I'll never get to see.

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Make Your Own Luck

It’s been almost half a year since I last posted. When I was younger I’d probably be upset about not keeping up with a blog, but I think maybe I don’t have as strict self-imposed rules as I’ve gotten older.

Nothing really interesting has gone on other than watching a ton of movies and work. I usually just try to post on here when there’s an interesting event happening. I think at the half point is usually when it starts to ramp up anyway.

A few weeks back I was able to go to Zurich to see some friends I made at the Zurich Film Festival. Jean de Meuron has become a good friend of mine since we were on the Hamilton Panel together that I hosted. I’ll be working the ZFF in September with Elena (ZFF’s social manager) and their social team, so that should be a great experience.

Zurich is a beautiful city, it made me forget about being online and social media work even though it was because of it that led me there.

You open the app and people you know are at the premiere, sharing their work, everyone got the credential, everyone is six feet from someone you grew up watching on screen. It's easy to feel like you missed a turn. Like there's a list and my name quietly fell off it sometime around 2019.

I do the math on other people's lives sometimes, which is the dumbest thing a person can do, and yet here I am, an adult, doing it. The math is always wrong. I'm comparing my random Tuesday to someone's best ten seconds of the month and somehow feel perpetual melencholy.

For a while I told myself the answer was making your own luck. And maybe that's part of it. But I think the bigger thing is just being a real friend. So much of this industry, at least the LA version I've seen, runs on what you can do for someone. Ask to hang out and you get ghosted, because there's no upside. People are warm right up until you stop being useful.

ZFF has been the opposite. Everyone there has been so kind and so genuine that it almost threw me off at first. Jean is the perfect example. We talked about hanging out in Zurich and then we actually did it. No agenda, just two people walking around a beautiful city talking about movies for hours. We're looking forward to working together now, but that came second. The friendship came first, and that almost never happens to me anymore.

So maybe it was never about making your own luck. Maybe you just find your people and hold onto them. Turns out that's worth more than any red carpet photo, although red carpets are still pretty cool.