At twenty-seven, a guy from Southern California sold everything he owned and moved to Florence. He had never been to Europe. He didn’t speak a word of Italian.

That person is me. And this is post one hundred.

I was thirty when I wrote my first blog post. June 14th, 2015. I had just spent two weeks showing my mom around Italy- Rome, Venice, Tuscany, a birthday party on the entire floor of a Renaissance palace- and I sat down and tried to describe all of it. The post was long, full of tangents, and packed with details I probably should have edited out. But buried in the enthusiasm was something real: that showing my mom Italy had made me discover my passion for sharing the world through my eyes. For making cultural enrichment accessible to more people. I didn’t know yet what that sentence would ask of me. But it was already true.

What was also true from the beginning is that the camera moved faster than the writing. It still does. I’ve been shooting constantly- cities, seasons, light, moments that felt significant even when I didn’t have the words for them yet. There are roughly two hundred stories waiting for their turn, and new ones keep joining the queue before the existing ones get their chance.

But here’s what I’ve learned about how memory works, at least for me: my photographs unlock it. I can look at an image from years ago and be back in that street, in that light, at that exact hour. Every trip I’ve taken has been mapped and noted along the way- points saved, observations recorded, details set aside for whenever the time comes to write them properly. The stories haven’t faded. They’re intact. They’re just waiting for the words to catch up.

The Notre Dame post is a good example of how this works, and why it matters. I wrote it in 2025 about a trip I took in April 2019. Two weeks before the fire, I was standing in front of that cathedral with my camera, mildly disappointed by the flat gray light. I took the photos anyway. Those images later became something I never anticipated- records of a version of the cathedral that would change forever two weeks later. You don’t always know what you’re documenting until afterward. That’s one of the quieter reasons for never stopping- and for eventually writing everything down.

The earliest posts here were pure travel diary. Personal, enthusiastic, unfiltered. That was the right mode for where I was. But over time something shifted. The posts I felt most compelled to write started going somewhere deeper- not just recounting what I saw, but examining what it meant to see it at all. Why certain light stops you. What happens when you return to the same place with different eyes. What slowing down actually does to the quality of your attention.

A category called “Of Lens & Mind” became where that thinking landed. Photography as a form of meditation. The way spending real time in front of a subject changes what you eventually see in it, and within yourself. Ansel Adams- who I had dismissed entirely in high school- finally making complete sense years later after enough trips, enough hours, enough light. The Florence in black and white post, where I set the camera to monochrome only and went out without a safety net. Not for the shop, not for anyone else. Just to remember why I started.

That shift in the writing connects to something Italy taught me more broadly. When you spend years around buildings, streets, and frescoes that have survived centuries, you start thinking differently about what is worth making. You notice how much of what surrounds us is designed to be consumed quickly, forgotten, and replaced. I wanted the opposite. My posts take longer to write because I want them to hold up. I want them to still feel worth reading years from now- the same way I want the fine art I create to still be on someone’s wall decades from now.

You can’t make something that lasts by rushing it. That applies to how I travel, how I shoot, and how I write.

Sagra del Fuoco in Recco

Every September, Recco turns into something different. Bells echo through the hills, cannons shake the air, colored smoke rises from the riverbed, fireworks sparkle in the night sky, and the streets fill with the tantalizing smell of food. This is the Sagra del Fuoco, the feast of the Madonna del Suffragio.

Visiting Pavia: A City I Keep Coming Back To

When you live in Italy long enough, certain places start to weave themselves into your life. Not always the big, flashy names- the ones that fill postcards and guidebooks, but the ones you happen upon naturally. Pavia is one of those places for me. 

A Pocket Guide to Exploring Milan: Beyond Fashion Week 

Last year, when I was busy photographing a fashion show in Italy I realized that many people drop in for the runways, the afterparties, and then leave- leaving almost no time to explore the local neighborhoods and city highlights. To sit in cafes and restaurants with the locals, or to listen to live music and immerse themselves.  

30k Steps: Grenoble Beyond The City Center

After more than a decade as a professional travel photographer, I’ve developed a rhythm for discovering new places. I don’t plan much. I don’t spend a lot of time looking up recommendations in advance. The only thing that I will do, and this applies to Grenoble, is that I will see if there is a subreddit where I can ask for things that I should absolutely not miss. 

Rome, Elevated: Vantage Points That Changed the Way I See the City

I’ve been to Rome over 30 times—and I don’t regret a single trip. Each visit has taught me something new, not just about photography, but about the city itself. Early on, I realized that snapping photos was great, but truly paying attention—listening, learning, and absorbing the stories behind the sights—made the experience even richer. 

Rediscovering the Waves: Recco, Italy

In the year leading up to our wedding in Florence in November 2023, I spent a lot of time exploring different towns throughout Italy, trying to find the right place for us to move after we got married. Just a couple of months before the wedding, I stumbled across Recco. I didn’t know much about it—and I’d never even been to Genova before—so I took a final scouting trip, knowing it was my last window before wedding prep would fully take over. 

Pescara, Tales from the Sea – A New Collection of Prints

Internal Thoughts: ” Summer’s here, and Florence is hot as usual. I wonder if there is a place I can go that has a beach, is someplace I’ve never been, that I can access via train, that might be worth checking out more in depth in regards to livability, and where I can also take some interesting photos to justify it as a work trip….Rimini? No, looks too crazy. Bari? Too far. Ohhh Pescara looks perfect!” This is basically how I made the decision to spend 10 days in Pescara this summer. I had never spent any significant time in Abruzzo before, and seeing that it was a place on the sea with a train station, and an airport I decided to pull the trigger, packed my bags, and headed out!

Behind the Shot: Stories behind some of my most popular photos of Florence

Florence has given me countless unforgettable memories, and recently I found myself revisiting some of them. I’ve basically been searching for some new ideas to write about for my blog, as well as some ideas for some new video content- so I decided it would be a good idea to start scrolling through my IG feed and post archive to see if anything might inspire me. Not long after I started scrolling into the past I thought it would be interesting to share with you some of the images of Florence that got the most likes/engagement in general, and some of the stories behind them.

Somewhere in those years of wandering and writing, I invented a word for what I was doing. Photograflâneur. It’s the name of this blog now, and there is a full post about how that word came to be for anyone who wants the longer version. What matters here is that naming the practice helped clarify the mission- and the mission had been forming long before I had the word for it.

The clearest version of it shows up in the messages I receive most often from locals after photographing their cities. “I never realized my city was this beautiful.” That shift- when someone sees their own streets differently because of an image- is one of the core reasons behind everything here. And it’s not only the famous places. Some of the most meaningful responses have come from posts about cities that rarely make the lists- places most people haven’t thought to visit, that hold just as much to offer to anyone willing to look.

But the mission was never just about inspiring people to travel. It’s about inspiring everyone to connect more deeply with the world around them. To slow down. To actually notice what’s there. That applies to the first-time visitor arriving somewhere with fresh eyes, and it applies just as much to the person who has been walking the same streets for years and gradually stopped seeing them. Presence doesn’t require a plane ticket. Sometimes it just requires the willingness to look again.

Post one hundred lands in the middle of all of this. Not at the end of something, and not at a clean new beginning. Right in the middle- which is probably exactly where it should be.

The camera is still ahead of the writing. Stories are still waiting. New places keep arriving before the existing ones have had their turn. That’s not a problem to solve- it’s just the shape of a blog that has never stopped moving. And it means there’s a lot still to come, in both directions.

That hasn’t changed since the first post.

Everything else has.

Thank you for being here- across one post or all of them.

More to come.