Mountains get all the glory. Sunrises and sunsets get all the fame. Alpine lakes and their reflections get all the attention. Ancient trees get all the love.

But what about everything beneath them?

Tiny water droplets cling to velvet ferns, holding entire worlds in their surface tension. A salamander moves quietly through the damp forest floor. A slug slides across wet leaves. Fungi rise through the soil, weaving unseen networks beneath the ground.

Life here moves at its own rhythm. Never rushed. Never competing for attention.

Tiny insects live out their entire worlds in the space beneath our notice. And yet, they are not separate from the grand scenes we travel so far to see—they make them possible.

Without them, the forest would not function. The mountains would not feel alive. Even the stillness we associate with wild places would not exist.

We tend to prioritize what is large, visible, and extraordinary. The summit. The view. The photograph-worthy moment.

But nothing we consider “grand” exists in isolation. It is built on layers of small, often unseen systems working quietly in the background.

We are no different.

Our lives are woven together like threads in a larger tapestry—held up by things that rarely ask to be seen.

And sometimes, if you slow down enough to notice, the smallest parts of the world are the ones that teach you the most about how everything holds together.

Watch your step. The smallest lives are doing some of the most important work.

I am not a patient person. I don’t particularly like being still. I like doing, moving, feeling productive. And yet, if I want to make good photographs, I have had to learn how to be patient.

Observing. Still. Present.

Somehow, these things coexist inside me at the same time. I have to be restless enough to start a hike before sunrise, but still enough to wait when I get there.

For a long time, I struggled with that dichotomy. I would arrive somewhere beautiful, feel the urge to move on too quickly, or become frustrated when a moment didn’t immediately reveal itself. I thought I needed to do more in order to get what I was looking for.

One day last summer, I was hiking in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness. I reached the summit expecting the mountain to be right in front of me. Instead, it was completely shrouded in fog.

There was a time I would have left.

But I didn’t.

I sat down and waited.

At first, nothing changed. The fog held steady, thick and unmoving. But slowly, almost without announcement, the mountain began to emerge. Not all at once, but in waves. The fog would pull back for a moment before drifting in again, revealing and concealing the mountain in turn.

I didn’t leave with what I thought I came for. Not exactly.

But I left with something better.

A different understanding of waiting. Not waiting for perfection, but simply waiting long enough to see what is already there begin to reveal itself.

It's tough to do. You spend all this time and effort getting to a place, and when it doesn't work out the way you planned, it's disappointing.

Sometimes we try so hard to create the photograph we imagined that we miss the one unfolding in front of us.

The mountain that morning was never what I expected it to be. It appeared and disappeared. It changed from moment to moment. It was gone in the perfect light and reappeared in the harsh daylight. But perhaps that was the lesson.

Photography is, at its heart, an act of observation. And observation requires patience.

Sometimes the most important thing we can do is stay a little longer and see what reveals itself.

Plus, it's never a bad day sitting at the foot of a mountain…

Being a winner is the best. Everyone says so.

Spend five minutes on social media and you are constantly being fed ideas about how you can be fitter, thinner, richer, happier, and more successful. Have more. Be more. Do more. Success is presented as constant and effortless…if only you can reach it.

But what if making it to the top wasn’t what it’s all about?

Everyone loves to show summit photos, say how many miles they ran, how clean they eat, how effortlessly they travel, how easy everything is, how much better you feel. What are we really losing, though, by only showing the best, glossy, highly curated wins?

Certainly, it couldn’t be worse than being labeled a loser.

Of course, no one is perfect or curated even close to all the time. Let’s be honest, even the best of us reach that metric only very occasionally.

Lately, I’ve been feeling this sting through my photography.

Putting yourself out there—to social media, galleries, open calls, inquiries—only to flop, or worse, be met with dreaded silence.

Fun.

It took me a long time to realize that almost everyone creative goes through this. Almost no one talks about it, though. We are only shown the best, or the highly curated “fails.” The climb, as we all know, though, is often messy, exhausting, and hot.

Sharing something you care about feels a bit like the beginning of a hike at one in the morning. Everything feels unsteady. Landmarks are gone. The wind bites, you’re tired, your hands are numb. For some reason, you keep moving.

Photography has opened me up to criticism that is sometimes genuinely helpful, and sometimes quietly cutting.

“Some of these are good…”

“Are you still doing that camera thing?”

Little seeds of doubt planted on top of missed opportunities, silence, and rejection.

People often equate winning with being the best, but that is not always true. Taste is subjective. Timing matters. Lighting matters. Words matter. Luck matters. Sometimes all of those things push one person over the edge while another remains unseen.

So why keep doing it?

Because. The risk of never trying hurts more than rejection ever could.

Quietly working for years with no one watching, while safe, also keeps you small.

Buried beneath all of the noise and unrealistic expectations, you believe in yourself. You believe you have something to say. You believe you are capable of making something real.

Most of all, you believe it matters.

So you take a deep breath. You pull yourself back up. You look toward the summit far away, and put one foot in front of the other.

There may be a million people ahead of you.

But after a while, you realize that being a loser is not nearly as terrible as the world makes it out to be.

Maybe the trials of being the best loser shape you for when you do make it, or maybe you realize that being a loser is actually pretty great because it means you believe in yourself enough to continue on.