Changing Course: A Life Drawn Back to the Sea
“This is why the attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your skill with attention to the most delicate shades of excellence, is a matter of vital concern. Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond—a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art—which is art.””
Somewhere between the pull of the tide and the pressure of deadlines, I found myself at a crossroads. Not in crisis — but in clarity. After years of building a career in storytelling, image-making, and purposeful content creation across fields as varied as engineering, live music, research, and the arts, I realized that the thread running through it all — what kept me centered — was the sea.
Not just as subject, but as compass.
This Logbook is where I begin to chart this course change — not away from everything I’ve done, but toward a more integrated, essential version of it. It’s about giving space to the part of me that has always looked to the sea for rhythm, reflection, and restoration. About letting that part lead.
Some of my earliest memories are steeped in salt and sun. The sea was never a background — it was a presence. I remember the sound it made before I could name it, the smell of brine on skin, the pull of the current around my ankles like a secret invitation.
As a child, I learned to read the moods of the sea the way others read weather reports — by the shape of the waves, the weight of the wind, the silence before the swell. And while other parts of life grew louder — school, responsibilities, the city’s static — that silent language stayed with me.
We spent summers on a small island, the kind of place where time doesn’t pass, it collects. There, surrounded by rock, light, and water, I felt something I now recognize as coherence. A clarity of being. The kind of feeling you don’t chase, but find when you stop moving.
The sea wasn’t just a place to visit; it was where I belonged before I even understood the idea of belonging.
And yet, life took me inland — professionally, at least. Into studios, edit rooms, production meetings, big stages and small offices. I worked with precision, built a language of my own behind the lens, told stories for others, for brands, for institutions, for movements. And I loved the craft of it — the structure, the impact, the endless refining of my visual voice.
But recently, something began to shift. Not a crisis, as I said — but a current too strong to ignore. A need to reorient, to acknowledge that I had been circling something essential, and it was time to dive in.
It began, perhaps, with a whisper — a growing sense that what I was doing, though meaningful, was missing something vital. Not in terms of content or value, but in resonance. I had the tools, the voice, the experience — but the direction needed fine-tuning. A realignment, like adjusting the sails when the wind shifts subtly. The kind of shift you only notice if you're paying attention.
This wasn’t about abandoning a career. It was about folding it inward, deeper into who I am. About allowing the sea — which had always been the undercurrent — to become the surface.
The course change didn’t come with drama or fanfare. It came through the quiet decision to start saying yes to what truly moved me. To document not just events or products, but the intimate relationship between humans and water. To capture boats not as objects, but as living vessels of memory and labor. To observe the invisible crafts — the shipwrights, the fishermen, the tidal engineers, the hands that keep our coastal culture alive. And through it all, to explore how light and texture and time leave their imprint on everything touched by salt.
In making this turn toward the sea, I didn’t leave anything behind. If anything, I brought it all with me: years of directing, filming, photographing, editing, listening. The rigor of my commissioned work. The emotional precision I developed in music and live storytelling. The curiosity honed through documentary practice. The rhythm, the timing, the patience.
All of it flows into this new phase — where maritime life, coastal heritage, human craft, and the living sea itself become not just subjects, but collaborators. Where my professional life finally aligns with a deeper calling.
This Logbook will follow that alignment. It’s a place for slow reflection, behind-the-scenes fragments, notes from the field, and glimpses into what I see — and how I see it. A record of this evolving relationship with the sea, with image-making, and with the act of paying attention.
