Nov 09, 2025
3 min read
I wrote about my love of photography in a post. I wrote it largely to start stuffing my newly refreshed website with some content, and to get used to how I'll post here. But also because I do genuinely love photography.
Last week we had a week-long onsite for leaders in Europe. And on the first two days we had an interesting set of thought experiments wrapped up in a "value selling" workshop guise.
One such thought experiment was one to find out something new about a partner, and to have us explain something to them that they might not know about us. Then, we had to shorten the talk-track. And again, trim it down to go no more than 10s.
My buddy in this one told me about the kinds of vacation he takes. That he prefers to go all-out on beachside vacations for 2 weeks and just bring nothing. No tech, no work distractions; nothing. And he has to do it every few months in order to decompress from how busy work is. I love his ideology but it doesn't work for me. Even if I'm not actively doing work, I am working. I feel empowered by it and like obsessing over weird details when I'm not actively at a laptop.
Right now, I'm a bit stressed and overwhelmed because I have over 30 direct reports as I transition to a new role, hire managers and finalise annual plans. It's a lot. But because I tend not to eat the elephant whole and think about thinks in small chunks for good windows of time, it works out. I also have no fear of making a decision quickly. Nothing I do is life-or-death, so it's easy to have a very educated guess that I feel comfortable defending later.
But, in that moment, I was jealous of the idea that I could just wander away for a few weeks. Until I had to tell my story to him. I had 1 minute to give him a story that tells him something he never knew about me, some context and why I'm telling that story.
For a brief second I thought about telling him about my love of motor racing; physical or digital. How I have a sim rig setup in my attic. How that's an escape I want to explore more as my kids get older and I can escape the house for a few hours. Imagine doing that in a race car in the track 40mins from my house every few weeks. How awesome would that be?!
But no, instead, I took a leap and made a quick, defensible decision. I spoke about my love of photography. How sure, it's perceived as art. But for me it's a technical discipline that I get to share the output of. Kind-of like building a website or something, but less utilitarian. I talked about the art of knowing what the camera is doing to do, my fixation on prime lenses. How I want to be the kind of person who has an array of Leica's but find more pleasure in owning Fuji's.
And it landed on the point. I like photography because it allows me to escape. I don't need a 2 week vacation if I can take snaps while I wander around somewhere. I don't need to give myself escape time when I can do it with my camera. And even better, my camera forces me to escape. Like my trip to San Francisco in January. I have a day to kill before my flight so I'm renting a Porsche 911 to take down the coast with my camera. And I'll likely only have 1 lens to mess around with, forcing my creativity down a specific rabbit hole.
I then shortened it down to a 30s monologue. And then again to a 10s one. And each time it landed beautifully. And my partner in that moment understood way more about me than I expected to impart on him. And while he doesn't care about photography, he totally got me.