I’ve wanted a 50mm lens for years… 50mm was my first lens, but for whatever reason I switched to mostly shooting with a 35mm as I became a professional. I guess the wider angle gave me more options for documentary photography. But lately…I’m getting shy. I don’t enjoy getting as close as I used to. I think after almost twenty years of shooting, I’m feeling a bit fried. My other main lens - an 85mm - was just a bit too tight, the 35mm too wide…For years I just felt like it was an unnecessary expense, but I finally bit the bullet and got a 50mm 2.5 for my Sony AR7III (my main digital body).

I love it. The lens is small and has an aperture ring that I find super fun because it has that film photography feel. Shooting wildlife felt a bit simpler. I could get close, but not so close as to disturb the animal while still compressing enough of the background.

Playing with details and layering is a joy. And for me…the size helps. The lens is tiny and keeps my kit small. Having the one lens while I am out walking makes me focus on light and composition. Its taking me back to being a young photographer again.

All of this to say. What? Well… I almost always recommend to my students that they just shoot with what they have. Buying camera gear is a trap. For the most part, its not going to help you become a better shooter. Especially if your compositions are still no good, and you are missing light opportunities. Despite that truth though - sometimes a new piece of kit helps get you excited. Its one of the more unfortunate realities of being raised in a capitalist society - a new toy still is exciting. I think for me, having not bought a new piece of gear in about six years, finally investing in some new lenses, is opening up some what has otherwise been stagnant creativity.

In the river valley below—where the Rio Grande is funneled through a concrete culvert—the Mexican military was in a standoff with the U.S. Border Patrol on the opposite side. In the shade of the bridge, a group of people sat mourning their loved one. Below, near the water, was a body. It was 15-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca.

Güereca’s family maintains that he was playing a game with friends, daring each other to run back and forth from the U.S. side back into Mexico. Other stories say that Güereca had been near the border when a group of migrants attempted to cross. As some versions of the story tell it, a few children began throwing rocks across the river toward the other embankment after a group of migrants was being detained by the Border Patrol. It’s a long throw for anyone, even an athletic kid with a strong arm, to make it from one side to the other. I can’t imagine they posed any real threat. Nonetheless, Agent Jesus Mesa Jr. drew his handgun and fired across the border into Mexico, striking the young boy and killing him instantly. Whether they were playing a game - or in fact throwing rocks - there is no scenario where lethal force was warranted.

The scene was incredibly tense. Gunshots were fired at least twice more while I was there (although I do not actually know where the gunfire originated), sending the growing crowd retreating to the concrete embankment for cover. The Mexican Military showed restraint, but there was clear pressure to push the U.S. officials back to their side. For several hours, we watched as Border Patrol agents took photographs of the evidence and the crowd on the Mexican side, all of it punctuated by wails of grief.

I spent the next few days covering the story for The Wall Street Journal. Güereca’s family was kind to the press; they wanted us there, hoping that we could share their story and bring about some measure of justice.

Justice, however, was never served. Agent Jesus Mesa Jr. walked free, and no compensation for his death was made, despite the family taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

This was not an isolated event. There has been several shootings like this one in Border Patrol history. Even more in the larger Homeland Security apparatus. The killing of 37-year-old Renée Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis this past January—and the nationwide protests that followed—immediately brought me back to that moment at Puente Negro.

To understand this continuum of state escalation, it is necessary to understand the modern border apparatus. Güereca was killed by an agent from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency tasked with policing the physical boundary and a 100-mile interior zone. Good was killed by an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for interior enforcement, detention, and deportation. Both of these agencies operate under the massive umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), formed in the wake of 9/11.

Qualitative data collected over the past two decades by organizations like the ACLU and the American Immigration Council proves that these civil rights violations are institutional. Extensive documentation reveals patterns of systemic abuse: deliberate medical neglect and inhumane conditions in ICE detention facilities, such as the severe physical and sexual abuse recently documented at Fort Bliss, the intentional destruction of humanitarian water supplies by CBP agents in the desert, and the systemic use of racial profiling in roving interior patrols. According to advocacy tracking, since 2010, there have been at least 367 fatal encounters with CBP personnel, and 2025 marked ICE’s deadliest year in over two decades, with 32 people dying in custody. There has been at least six cross border shootings since Güereca’s death. One notable case, José Antonio Elena Rodríguez was shot ten times in the back through the border fence in Nogales, Sonora.

Violence is entangled in the history of these agencies. When the U.S. Border Patrol was founded in 1924, it was established largely to enforce the xenophobic national origins quotas of the era. As historian Kelly Lytle Hernández documents in her foundational text Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol, the early agency functioned as a frontline instrument of racial control. Recruits were frequently drawn directly from organizations steeped in racial violence, including the Texas Rangers and the Ku Klux Klan. This brought a culture of vigilantism to the border that persists to this day. In the 1970s, Mexican workers became a scapegoat for stagnation in the U.S. economy, and the rhetoric of an “invasion” took root. In the 1980s, President Reagan began tying border security to the War on Drugs, further fortifying the region. In the 1990s, operations in San Diego and El Paso tightened restrictions around migration. But it was in the 2000s, post-9/11, that the true militarization of the border and the creation of Homeland Security took full effect. Trump’s recent discourse is simply a continuation of these narratives. Ultimately, the United States has been in an active defensive posture toward its southern neighbor since the Mexican-American War—a war ironically started by the U.S.

Beyond the gunfire, there are other types of violence. The subtle kind. The kind that is a direct result of enforcement policies. Every year, migrants die crossing into the United States in South Texas. They die primarily because they are chased by Border Patrol into the brush near checkpoints, where they lose their guides. This type of death is the quiet reality of security on the border.

After several days of covering Güereca’s death, I decided to cross into Texas to visit my cousins. I needed a break. But when I tried to cross, the Border Patrol pulled me into secondary questioning. They didn’t ask me directly about Güereca, but they gave me a ton of grief about my cameras and my residency in Mexico. They told me that I was an illegal resident of Mexico (which was fundamentally untrue) and that I had been crossing illegally (also untrue). For at least a year following the publication of this story, I would be pulled aside into secondary screening whenever I crossed into the United States—whether I was crossing in a vehicle or even on an airplane.

Over the years, I have spent a lot of time with Homeland Security as a photojournalist, and also on a personal level. I have family who served in the organization, and I think most folks who live in border areas have at least some personal relationship with them. Growing up, I would see them at checkpoints and get searched. Once, while crossing to Texas from Piedras Negras, they cut a hole in my car seat looking for drugs. They found none. Stories like this are pretty PG. There’s nothing special about that circumstance.

I believe that, at a minimum, Homeland Security does serve some purpose. But at the same time, we can not deny that currently they act without oversight and near-total impunity. The inner culture of these agencies became most apparent while I was working alongside the Brooks County Sheriff’s Department in Falfurrias, Texas, about three years after Güereca’s death. We spent a lot of time around ICE and Homeland Security, and while I was open about my capacity as a journalist, many of the agents made assumptions. They would see me and my blonde hair, riding with the Sheriff, and just act like themselves. The conversations were inherently racist. I remember a time when two agents high-fived after catching a group of migrants, loudly declaring, “Crushing dreams.” Having just come back from Honduras, where I was working with people suffering from severe political violence and interviewing migrants seeking refugee status, that blasé statement landed loudly. The county sheriff exchanged looks with me. It didn’t sit well with him either.

But looking closer, you realize these folks are cogs in the wheel of massive U.S. machinery. By design, border policy has actually worked. It has worked in keeping the United States wealthy by strictly limiting access to certain people. Despite free trade agreements designed to let goods and raw materials flow freely across the border, the system ensures that labor remains artificially cheap in places like Ciudad Juárez. Meanwhile, those who do manage to trickle in through the brush and past the guards are work jobs for minimal pay and without legal protections. Providing those protections is costly for businesses, especially those incentivized to produce ever-cheaper goods for American households. A militarized border means a vulnerable workforce, which means higher corporate profits—and, of course, booming business for the detention centers and jails.

But what does the inherently violent nature of these institutions have to do with effective policing? When we govern ourselves from a position of fear rather than compassion, it always ends in more pain, loss, and suffering. It ends in wasted lives.

If we chose to govern ourselves from a position of compassion, we could change this dynamic entirely. But compassion requires training, time, education, and mentorship. These are harder skills to learn. Navigating people in vulnerable, desperate situations requires deep social awareness. I’ve seen these moments of compassion from Border Patrol agents, too—moments when they offer water to migrants and treat them with genuine care. Some of these agents grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, where immigration is a daily reality. For them, the Border Patrol is a way to make a living and serve their community.

But while observing these agencies on patrol, you quickly see that they aren’t hunting hardened criminals; they are mostly chasing regular, desperate people. There is an undeniable adrenaline rush to it. A call comes over the radio, people scatter, and suddenly they are blasting at 100 mph down dirt country roads. It feels lawless. For some folks coming back from deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, being out on these roads was a way to just let it rip. It’s a recipe for disaster. Add that adrenaline culture to a racist institutional history, and the current hiring practices become deeply worrying.

Allowing these institutions to operate like this has been devastating for society. By violently ripping families apart, we create a world where immigrants are terrified to seek help from authorities. This leaves them more vulnerable and susceptible to exploitation than ever, which only creates more internal violence and further stokes the fire of nationalism within the United States—a fire that ultimately only serves a powerful few.

Recent tactics by Homeland Security officials have been over the top, almost performatively violent. You can see the rage in the officers while they are executing their orders. The dismissiveness of basic human decency is often palpable. An ICE agent once told me that they were trained to do exactly that. They were trained to be aggressive, to shake people up, and to intimidate them. They are quite literally the point of the spear of modern American authority.

The border is a place where human rights are suspended, where private property can be searched without cause, and where anyone can be detained and questioned. The expansion of these policies across the nation via the Homeland Security apparatus is deeply troubling. It means that a federal agency now has unchecked authority to execute violence with near-total disregard for the law, anywhere in the United States. The apparatus has become so massive that it needs the perpetual crisis at the border to justify its budget, its weapons, and its authority. If the enemy disappears, their power disappears. The modern security state’s existence is bound to this violence. And that means people will continue to lose their lives.

When my curiosity and creativity leave me, as they admittedly sometimes do, I usually try to ride it out. I tell myself that all creatives go through cycles, and that to attempt to force it - to push myself to create may only deepen the rut. It could even bring back the burnout I’ve tried so carefully to avoid. That my mind and body are asking for a break from the constant interrogation of the world around us - that I should just allow myself to exist and wait for that tingle - that spark to come back. This usually results in a period of deep reclusiveness before I eventually re-emerge to get back to business. This period can last days, weeks or months.

I think maybe all these years I’ve been doing it wrong.

If my creative spark is a lost cat, I shouldn’t just sit around and hope it comes back. I need to entice it to come home. Put a can of tuna and their favorite bed in the yard, put up some “MISSING” posters, go for a walk around the neighborhood looking under cars. Put in the effort to bring my elusive friend home.

My latest loss of motivation and spark comes from a confluence of schedule overload (something I do to myself often and it *surprise* never helps my creative process) and the unexpected: our dog is sick.

Anyone who knows Dominic and I also likely knows Flika. A 9-year-old mutt we picked up from the side of a highway near Puerto Escondido, Flika has been our constant companion for almost a decade. In February, we took her and our other dog Gobi up to Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos—a town about five hours north of us, and where both Dom and I have worked on projects in the past. We went to visit old friends and also research a new project we are beginning. Flika seemed tired the whole trip but enjoyed her forays to the beach and seemed pretty happy to just be involved in the family road trip. At this point in late February, my creative juices were flowing and I was feeling fired up to start something new with my favorite collaborator in one of my favorite places.

When we arrived home after our long weekend in Lopez, Flika took a turn. In the span of 24 hours, her back legs stopped working, she refused food and water and she couldn’t seem to hold her head up. We worried that her cancer, which she received treatment for four years ago, had returned silently and taken over her insides. We thought we were saying goodbye.

We carried her 60lb body into a veterinary hospital in La Paz, sure that an ultrasound would reveal horrors growing inside her. Sure they would tell us the kindest thing we could do for her would be to let her go. But her tests all came back clean. It wasn’t until they tested her joint fluid that her diagnosis finally became clear: Flika’s joints had gone septic.

We have theories about how this happened (the prevailing theory is a cut she had on her hock in January that got minorly infected may have been the culprit) but the reality is we’ll never know. Our girl spent 9 days in the veterinary hospital before coming home on plenty of antibiotics and painkillers, still unable to walk but in much better spirits.

Since February 25, my thoughts have revolved around little but her. When her next round of meds is, if her pain levels are decreasing, how she is doing in her rehab, how much weight she is putting on each foot, how many times a day she is going to the bathroom, when her next laser therapy appointment is, when I next need to change her bandage. I’ve left her twice since she’s been out of the hospital—once for my future sister-in-law’s bachelorette party in Cabo and once to shoot an assignment for three days in La Ventana. I’ve had to turn down two jobs during her recovery. Any excitement I felt about a new project with Dom and the dream assignment I was shooting and the ideas I had for future projects (and admittedly, ideas for pieces for this Substack) dissipated.

And I thought: “fine.”

Like waiting for my lost cat to just show up again, I let my spark leave me without a fight. I didn’t try to grab a wisp in the departure. I figured it would come back eventually.

But the inevitable (and hopefully relatable) frustration came back quickly. I wanted to want to be excited about making work. I had mapped our spring of 2026 out in my mind as a period of creative growth and forward momentum, and instead I found myself scrolling on Tiktok into the wee hours of the night and not even having the motivation to change out of my pajamas on the days I wasn’t literally forced to. I daydreamed about daydreaming about my creative endeavors, made documents I planned to fill in with research and story-planning that remained blank, side-eyed my camera gathering dust on my desk and froze under the enormous pressure of the sudden loss of something that had felt so steadfast just a month before.

In late March, we had a friend visiting us to shoot some footage for a pilot series he is working on. I, quietly, felt deeply inconvenienced by the timing. I was over the moon to see our friend, but I was also feeling at my absolute lowest creatively and energetically. I didn’t know how I would push through the week and dreaded the thought of perhaps having to pretend that I was the motivated machine I had been just a month before.

It turned out that week was exactly the lesson I needed. Our friend asked very, very little of us in terms of creative output–the pressure remained on him, not us. But the visit pushed me to re-enter the world. We went shark diving off of Cabo San Lucas and I brought my camera housing. We took a sunset walk at a nearby beach and I found myself genuinely excited to be photographing a pelican feeding frenzy. I found myself asking questions, feeling curious. It turns out that just being present in the outside world instead of retreating to my hidey-hole house was the tuna-and-bed-in-the-yard answer to coax the lost spark home to me.

One of my favorite quotes - by any photographer ever is - by Jim Richardson: “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.” It turns out that every period of creativity loss I’ve ever experienced has also coincided with a period of general isolation from the world around me. Moments where I have felt too overwhelmed to be out and about, so I just hide and let my frustration mount until something inevitably kicks my ass back out into the world of the living. The lesson I took from all of this was actually so simple: when the spark leaves, don’t chase it like a predator. But don’t ignore it either. Go stand in front of interesting stuff. See if you feel a tingle. If you don’t, leave your camera in the bag and just be in the moment. If you feel the tingle, reach for your camera. Don’t hide from the world because you feel like you have nothing to offer it. Just be in the world and your love and excitement for it will come home to you eventually.

I still don’t feel “back,” exactly. I’m not saying these experiences refilled my tank completely, and I’m not pushing anything. I’m, for the first time, just trying to encourage the spark to stay. I sure as hell haven’t finished the grant application I planned to work on this past week, I’m making some very mediocre images, and those research and story-planning documents I made still sit blank.

But I’m here. I’m writing, I’m making pictures, and for now the spark is home. It may leave again, but I know exactly what I’m going to do when I go looking for it next time.

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Its been 25 years. Damn. Since I started taking photography seriously. I was 13 the first time I picked up a camera with the intention of “doing photography”. It never was a hobby for me, but rather a craft that I could turn into a trade and (try to haha) make a living. I studied like you would learn to swing a hammer, or a concrete saw, because that was the cultural context of my life at the time, as I worked for my father who owns a construction company in South Texas “doing construction.”

As I grew older photography continued its role transforming the context of my life expelling me into the world in a way that is unique to the craft, especially of documentary work, because for the most part you gotta go into the world and interact with it in order to make work. Because I treated it like a trade, my work became my life and my life became my work. I think it goes that way for most of us.

Photography is a weird art form. Everyone does it constantly, even monkeys do it. It is quite literally the construction of our modern human contextual world view. It allows us to draw from a deep visual library that we otherwise would have limited to our imagination. For reference compare this image to this one. But for the same reason the years I worked as a photojournalist started to color my mental state. I was surrounded by death and despair, so my inner world was dark. The visual memory database that fueled my nightmares was full of blood. I’m not complaining, I chose this. Thankfully at some point Meghan asked me very firmly to go to therapy to learn about my own ignorance. So I did, like so many people of my generation who were collectively pushed to unpack their shit in front of a professional.

About ten years ago, PTSD symptoms got so bad that picking up my camera would trigger full-blown panic attacks. Which sucked, because photography was how I made money. On my first National Geographic assignment, I developed a ridiculous ritual just to get outside. I set my alarm for 4 a.m. by the door and blasted death metal. The shock forced me to grab my camera and leave before my brain could sabotage me. Sometimes I’d sit in my car watching a perfect scene unfold, completely frozen. I bought a bike and cruised all over Ciudad Juárez —one less barrier. One less door to open. Eventually, I asked Meghan to stay with me in the field. Her presence helped me finish assignments I otherwise couldn’t. Looking back though I am grateful for it all. Had I not needed to make living, I might have put the camera away for good.

I started to decline assignments that destroyed my mental state, and instead focused on what brought me peace. Being in nature helped. One of my favorite projects was about the cloud forests of Veracruz—high-altitude forests hanging on since the ice age - endangered by climate change. Working there taught me how to shift my photographic practice into a slow meticulous meditation. For about a week I walked very slowly, mostly in silence, and made pictures of the plants and critters who live there on the same trail. This pulled me into the present moment in away I hadn’t experience before. I returned to Mexico City after the project, with a fever from a tic bite, and a new perspective on life.

Things happened out of order. Which, is how most things happen. Veracruz. The Colombian Amazon, where the writer left and I stayed behind. New Zealand. Shark fishing here where I live in Baja California Sur.

I went inward. Therapy helped—a lot, actually. When we moved to El Pescadero, I sold more tortas than photographs. Burnout and financial stress stacked up. I wondered if I had anything left to say. So I stopped trying to say anything. I just photographed what I found beautiful.

That shift mattered. Years of journalism had trained me to see what was broken. Its the mental equivalent of sifting through life looking at just the shitty parts. I started thinking about possible futures instead. Photographing the quiet helped ease the trauma I’d attached to my camera. Plants, it turns out, are fascinating. And while I still ask them permission when I take their picture, they rarely say no.

This year in Belfast, after a National Geographic Photo Camp, I loaded film into a tiny Olympus RC 35 a friend gave me in Ciudad Juárez years ago. For days, I walked around with my students, taking pictures. No pressure. Just walking. Engaging. Being outside. This shook something loose - and I started doing it more frequently at home. I have dozens of undeveloped rolls on my desk. The pictures are not the point. Getting outside is the reason to shoot.

In Belfast, I spent time with Mervyn Smyth and Samantha Robb of Belfast Exposed, who use photography as a mental health tool in their community. They introduced me to the idea of photography as a “transitional object”—a concept from psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. Like a kid’s teddy bear. Something that helps you self-soothe while you figure things out. That’s the enduring power of the camera for me. It’s a transitional object—the thing I return to when my inner world falls apart. It helps me step back into the light. Most of the time, the pictures themselves don’t even matter.

As I move through different stages of life, photography keeps me grounded—especially when things feel overwhelming.

Making good pictures is hard. Not because of light or composition. For me the hard part is getting out to shoot. A few things that help me get out the door: Pick one simple subject. Use one lens. Walk and shoot. Forget the rules.

Writers often talk about allowing yourself to make a shitty first draft. I try to use this same sentiment when I go out to make pictures now.

I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years. It’s still not easy. Shyness and agoraphobia come and go. I still struggle with new projects. Rejection feels inevitable. I hear it in my head before I ask: No, you can’t take my picture, you fucking weirdo. But sometimes, people say yes. And when they do, something opens.

Once I’m shooting, my mind quiets. Time loosens. Even in chaos, the world slows down. (Which is why you gotta pay attention to your surroundings, once I was shot with a gas canister during a riot because I was too much in the zone.)

Lately, I’ve learned to touch that space without the camera. But it’s still there. Always has been.

It was before dawn and the pinks and purples had yet to breach the day and do their morning dance to welcome the sun. I snapped a few frames of the bustle of fishermen at the shoreline as Victor de la Toba maneuvered a rusty trailer with ease to drop a his panga into the estuary. I was hesitant, already weary from several weeks photographing fishermen, the types who are tired of journalists and environmentalists poking their noses in their livelihoods.

We pushed off and within minutes of crossing the lagoon, a grey whale blew out a salty breath of air within a few meters of the boat. It was the first time I had seen a whale, and because I was on this trip to document shark fisherman - and admittedly done very little research - I was surprised to see it. This Victor found hilarious, and his short bursting laugh punctuated the morning air between my own gasps of disbelief with every whale exhale, that only gave rise to more laughter from him. Little did I know that these whales, and this man would change the trajectory of my life and lead me to the woman I love and the place I now call home.

The rest of the journey was none the less eventful. Landing on Isla San Lazaro, we jumped into Victor’s pick-up an even rustier Toyota 4x4 with racing stripes and sea turtle stickers to cross through the sand dunes and then dash across the shoreline for nearly an hour. He stopped occasionally to collect samples from the remains of dead sea turtles that he would send off to scientists, or to show me the bones of some washed up animal. He pointed out a sunken ship, some coyotes that would later steal my shoes, and a bunch of sea lions.

We arrived at the lighthouse - a large white building that sat at the edge of a cliff. Here was Victor’s true home, where he had grown up, where his father was light house captain, and where he now kept watch.

The next morning he brought me to the fishing camp, and left me there in a plywood shelter he’d built. It was equipped with a barrel for water, and a dog named Buddy.

I spent weeks trying to befriend fishermen with limited success, I did however manage to send a message to the woman I was courting about the whales, which captivated her interest for days. I would hike to the highest place I could find each day and sit there for hours often in the dark to send her SMS messages with descriptions of the bay filled with blow holes.

Little did I know I was witnessing one of the most important whale migrations in the world. Nor did I know she would later become my wife, and that we would return to this place in a pilgrimage together.

I had to come back several times for the shark fishermen to finally befriend me. And I’ll get into that story later. But each trip was started with a journey with Victor. He would spend a few days with me, and when I would finish my adventure at the fishing camp, we would sit and talk for hours about fisheries and conservation, and his
life story.

Victor grew up in a way that was rare then, but now feels like it’s out of a novel. He lived on San Lazaro island when Baja California Sur was incredibly disconnected from the world, in a place that was disconnected from the Baja California peninsula. His family lived off the fruits of the ocean, and drank water from a well they dug in the sand dunes. He would cary water each day from there to the lighthouse to his family.

He told me stories about diving for sea turtles as a kid. How the older fishermen would slowly go blind from years of looking under water with no goggles or protective glass. How slowly he began to notice that the turtles were more scarce, and how that lead him to become concerned with the state of the natural world that was once brimming with life in Bahia Magdalena.

He told me stories about his wife Maricel, whom I met and became friends with as well. Later when my wife and I would visit them she would make fish and tortillas, and great salsas that would leave us with smiling faces and swollen bellies. Their love was something to be admired, and their care and connection with their environment was something that still inspires Meghan and I today.

Victor de la Toba Miranda, is one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met. He was a modest man, whose riches lay not in possessions, but in his profound knowledge of the ocean and his deep love for his family. He had a quick wit and a half-cocked smile, and he loved to gently pick on the softer parts of me.

Victor taught me a lesson more valuable than any university degree: you don’t need a formal education to understand nature. All you have to do is pay attention. And he always paid attention.

I often feel an overwhelming urge to get away, far away, to where the roads end and the cell service drops. But the truth is, the signs of man are everywhere. We’ve cut our way through every forest, bled the land for her minerals. Every day, we see the landscape scarred more deeply by our greed, and it’s easy to feel paralyzed by the sheer scale of it all. But when it feels impossible, I think of Victor. I see him walking with his granddaughter, carefully showing her how to place a mangrove seed on its end to give it a better chance to take root. I see him leaving out a dish of water for the bees and insects, carefully covering it with an old fishing trap so the coyotes couldn’t steal their share. These small, deliberate actions, repeated over a lifetime, are what make him one of my great heroes. He was a fisherman and a lighthouse captain who paid attention. He was always cultivating, wherever he went. Because of him, there is a momentum - hand-sewn mangroves that now give shelter to countless sea creatures.

His presence will be felt in that landscape for generations. It’s up to us to keep his memory alive, but his impression has already been made, and he set so much good into motion. Victor once told me, “You can only do what is within your reach.” And so I try, to do the good where I can, and not to lose hope.

His life calls on all of us to do what he did. To watch closely. To do what we can, where we can. And to remember that a single, well-placed seed can take root.

Victor de la Toba Miranda, lovingly known as Don Vic, passed on September 23, 2025 surrounded by family and friends at his home in Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos, Baja California Sur, Mexico. He spent a lifetime dedicated to the conservation and study of the flora and fauna around the Bahía Magdalena and Cabo San Lazaro. He leaves behind a legacy that will continue for many years to come, and has inspired many people to lead a life in conservation. The lighthouse on Cabo San Lazaro will continue to be maintained by his wife Maricel and children, Xiomara Solimar y Vladimir.

That’s the approach I’ve taken in just about every aspect of my life: I don’t know but please show me. Tell me. Explain it to me. Let me touch it, smell it, hold it, feel it. I try my best to arrive in any space with a wide open mind and heart—to be a blank slate. And all of this, I think, is why I became a documentary photographer.

I spent my twenties working as a photojournalist, often covering stories in short time frames with little-to-no notice that I was heading off for an assignment. I am not the most talented photographer in the world, but my talent lies in arriving in a brand new place, assessing it quickly, honestly presenting my intentions to the people I’m photographing, and then absorbing everything that happens around me. I have had the privilege of being present for and photographing some of the most pivotal moments of people’s lives, and being welcomed into those lives with grace.

(a wide edit from a tight deadline covering a caravan of immigrants for The New York Times in 2018)

(Transmitting photos to the New York Times of the solar eclipse in Mazatlan April 8, 2024 )

I have sorted, toned and transmitted photos to my editors on deadline from the dark corners of bars where patrons were singing karaoke or blasting banda, from below the bridge between the United States and Mexico in the pouring the rain, from a hammock deep in the Bolivian Amazon, from the bed of a truck at a funeral where caskets were still being buried, from the courtyard of the Mexico City military hospital at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. I spent a lot of years moving fast, trying to balance thoughtfulness, accuracy and timeliness while also holding the dignity of the people I was photographing at the highest priority.

(a wide edit from a story about a doctor treating covid patients in their homes for The New York Times in 2020)

And then I stopped.

Or, maybe more truthfully, the world changed and so did I. In the long pauses between assignments during the pandemic, the many months at home after years spent using the apartment I shared with my husband as a crash pad between trips to the airport, I realized (with the encouragement of Dom) that the rate at which I had been working was taking a toll on me. So many journalists and photographers can sustain the rhythm at which I had been working for their entire lives, but as it turns out…I could not.

Dominic and I moved from Mexico City to Baja California Sur in the hot, stormy summer of 2021. And here I am four years later, writing this first Substack entry to you.

I have spent much of the last four years trying to figure out the things I was moving too quickly to figure out while working as an assignment photographer. What is it that I actually want to do with my abilities as a storyteller? What are the stories I want to tell? How do I want to tell those stories? What audiences am I trying to reach?

And what did I miss when I was blowing through thousands of images on Photo Mechanic, frantically making selects to batch tone and send by the time the buzzer sounded?

I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve come up with three clear goals for myself, and for the longevity of my storytelling career:

-I want to tell stories slower. I want to breathe. I want to take my time if I need it.

-I want to tell stories focused on our natural world. In a different timeline, I’m a wildlife photographer. Maybe in this timeline I’m just becoming one a little later in the game.

-I want to work with my favorite person on the planet—my husband Dominic. We’ve worked next to each other for years, but now I want to work together. We share a passion for the environment and a special love for the wildly unique ecosystems of our home here in Baja California Sur.

(a gray whale here in Baja California Sur for National Geographic in 2021)

So that’s what we’re here for! Welcome to our Substack. Dom and I will be generating original content (sometimes together, sometimes individually) that focuses on both photography and the environment. We’ll also both be going back in to our archives, to re-examine the moments we may have missed in the tight edit. This is a space for photography enthusiasts, nature lovers and…let’s be real: nerds. Nerds like us.

We’re so happy you’re here.

Meg

Welcome to Wide Edit A newsletter by two documentary photographers who are trying to make sense of a changing world. If you’re getting this… you probably know us and if you don’t… please check out the About page.

This newsletter is born from a need for space, for self reflection, but also to continue a dialog with the wonderful people we have met throughout the years.

Anyway, lets begin simply, saying hello. Hello to you all wonderful people. Thank you for being here.

We will write consistently. We have an idea how often it will be.

Until the next time. We wish you a good day.

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