Location: Albany, Oregon

Photos: The last time we were together – my father, his grandchildren, and the final light in his smile.

Journal Entry:

Grief doesn’t always come in floods. Sometimes, it arrives in a slow drift—quiet and uninvited—settling into the corners of a life that hasn’t had time to pause.

These photos were the last I ever took of my father. The last time he stood beside me. The last time he wrapped his arms around his grandkids. The last goodbye, though none of us knew it would be.

He passed away on February 27, 2016. And while I’ve moved through the years since, I’m not sure I’ve really processed them. I’ve been busy. A father myself. A husband. A man trying to give his family everything they need, even if it means quietly setting my own needs aside.

But now, starting this journey through Legacy in the Lens, I find myself drawn back to him. To the weight of his presence. To the lessons he passed down in quiet moments and hard-won truths. To the steadiness in his eyes and the way he showed up for people, especially when it mattered most.

He taught me more than how to work with my hands or how to keep a promise. He taught me how to show up with heart. How to love without conditions. How to carry legacy in the way you make people feel seen.

And I’ve realized something: this series—this lens, this path I’m on, is in no small part because of him.

His legacy isn’t just in old photos or family stories. It’s in me. It’s in how I raise my children. In the hikes we take. In the stillness I now seek. In the way I try to hold others up while still figuring out how to carry myself.

Maybe I haven’t fully grieved. But maybe grief and gratitude can exist together, like light and shadow in a photograph. Maybe honoring his legacy means giving myself the space to feel everything…. Even the ache.

Because that ache… it means he mattered. And that I am, in many ways, still walking the trail he started.