Field Notes — WA / OR · Season 2025–2026
Director’sCut
The long way to every finish line.
00 — Overture
Trajectory is a funny thing. One moment it’s a season opener on the calendar. The next, a digital archive of thousands of frames — and you’re wondering how the shutter moved that fast. This is the year I stopped trying to capture everyone and started deciding what was actually worth keeping.
01 — Cold Mornings
Before anyone’s awake
The work starts before the forecast does. A wind advisory pings my phone before the Olympia Jamboree — freezing, driving rain, guaranteed. Day two of Districts, my 1DX throws Err 20 like a death sentence, State three days out. By day three of the WIAA meet I’m doing actual math on how much caffeine is medically defensible for another ten hours upright.
None of it shows in the frame. Nobody needs to see the gear failure, or the wind at the Ultimook river crossing, ankle-deep and numb, waiting for the mud-splattered reality to arrive. That’s the trade. You earn the frame by absorbing what it costs to get there first.
From the field journal
Getting that single frame is a journey in itself. For the athletes, it’s months of training. For me, it started with a 5-hour, 23-minute drive on a Friday afternoon, arriving at the Spokane Polo Grounds just as the sun went down. I found the packet-pickup tent, hoping to grab my media credentials before the morning crowds — but the wind was howling, so I gave up and headed back to the car.
I folded the seats, pumped up a sleeping pad, and kept editing photos from a job I’d been carrying all week. I woke to the sound of tires crunching dirt and doors slamming shut, hit snooze, and bought myself one more hour before finally getting up.
That’s the toll. I pay it without complaint, because somewhere on that dirt lot at sunrise, a kid is about to run the best race of their life — and I intend to be standing in the right spot when they do.
Read — The Winter Grind: A Letter to the Off-Season Runner
Same exhaustion. Different finish line. When a runner hits the deck, I’m right there — back aching, eyes burning from a laptop glow they’ll never see.
02 — The Start Line
The ninety seconds before the gun
There are ninety seconds before the gun when stadium noise sharpens into one unified roar. I know that rainbow of emotions because I’ve run it myself — fifty kilometers, fifty miles, enough ultras to understand the real story was never the finish line. It’s the grit required to get there.
I know why the Olympia girls write reminders on the backs of their hands. I know what it looks like when Dylan Rowell hits the final straight of a triple-crown attempt, when Cohen Butler empties the tank for a 3200 PR, when a freshman like Leah Hennen runs with a calm no freshman should have. My history as an athlete is the bridge — the reason this never feels like a job I clock into.
The hero shot wasn’t luck. I already knew what a triple-crown final straight looked like — I was watching for it before the gun ever fired.
03 — Uncredited
The frames nobody asked for
I’ve stopped chasing volume. Twenty-five images from a big meet instead of two hundred fifty isn’t a step back — it’s the point. Ruthless curation means the landing-leg blur and the awkward grimace hit the trash every time, and it means running the 15% Rule: closing the coverage gap for female athletes who still get a fraction of what they’ve earned.
The frames I keep are quieter. The look between rivals Mana Voss and Max Billett after the last step of a 1600m. The Coach Potatoes in bright yellow shirts, cheered on by their own athletes. A woman finishing a half-marathon directly in front of me, completely out of it, with no idea she was the center of a frame I’d keep forever.
And the ones I don’t publish at all — the athlete crying after a hard race goes to a private gallery, not a public feed. Some low points deserve privacy, not likes.
Some frames aren’t for the feed. Dignity doesn’t get an audience unless the athlete asks for one.
I photograph high school athletes like they’re professionals. Because to them, this is everything.
04 — Roll Out
Thank you to every athlete who let me into the pain cave — the mud at Glendoveer, the floodlights at Jesuit Twilight, the records that fell at Arcadia. The cut is yours as much as mine.
