Somewhere along the endless highways of commercial photography, you can lose yourself.
 You chase deadlines, trends, and invoices like a donkey chasing a green carrot—always just out of reach.
 The joy that once sparked your every shutter click becomes a checklist. You become lost, having a “ where did I put my glasses?” moment, when all the while they’re hanging around your neck… You search frantically for that original, simple vision that first made you pick up a camera.
For me, oddly enough, that rediscovery came through boiled peanuts.
Every year, my county hosts a small rodeo. Nothing fancy—no grand arena lights or celebrity cowboys.
Just dust, leather, families, and the smell of funnel cakes lingering in the late afternoon air.
On a whim, I decided to go—not for work, not for portfolio pieces—just to shoot.
But this time, I left behind all my heavy gear, my endless settings, my “professional expectations.”
 One simple camera. One simple lens. Everything set on auto.
 It wasn’t a technical exercise; it was a soul exercise.
At first, I wandered aimlessly through the crowd, half-lost in the noise of it all. Then I saw it: a small hand-painted sign…I was struck

“Boiled Peanuts.”

Something about that moment unlocked the place around me—the real place, not the one I’d frame neatly for a client. I started seeing everything differently:
The creased faces of ranchers, the wide-eyed wonder of kids in cowboy boots two sizes too big, the slow, golden drift of dust in the setting sun.
 It wasn’t about shooting for them anymore.
It was about seeing for me again.
That day reminded me:
 Photography, and maybe life itself, isn’t always about mastering the complex.
It’s about surrendering to the simple.
It’s not the big stages, the expensive gear, or the prestigious assignments that shape you—it’s the boiled peanut moments.
The small, quiet, overlooked things that reconnect you to why you started in the first place.
And no, for the record, I still don’t like boiled peanuts.
 But I’m forever grateful for the sign that pointed me home.

See Hometown Rodeo

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