Last week, I came across a quote that stayed with me:

I couldn’t find who wrote it, but beyond just being beautiful words, it made me pause and got me thinking. I opened the camera roll on my phone and started scrolling, wondering what it might reveal. How those words might apply to me.

Here’s what I saw:

Mountains. Stars. Auroras. The moon. Ice and glaciers. A few moments with me standing in those landscapes.

I stared at the screen, still unsure how to answer the question.

What is it, really, that I fear losing?

What are these images holding onto?

What do these places, these elements, mean — at their deepest?

Today, I invite you to sit with this question for a moment: what are you afraid of losing?

We rarely take photos of things that mean nothing to us.

Even the seemingly mundane images we keep often carry more weight than we realize. They aren’t just records of what was there, but attempts at remembering what we felt. Or that we lived that experience.

A photo can be a way to remember a time, a place, or a person. But it can also be a way to remember a feeling, a version of ourselves, even, that we’re afraid might slip away.

We photograph what we want to return to.

Children. Lovers. Sunsets. A pet curled up next to us.

They all mean something we want to hold onto. Something we fear might vanish, or change, or grow up too fast.

Photography, in that way, isn’t neutral. It’s not just about what we see.

It’s about what we can’t bear to forget.

And the more we look, the more we start noticing patterns. Certain places. Certain light. Certain people. They come back again and again, almost like our subconscious is trying to send us a message.

If we were to lay out our entire camera roll as a timeline, I wonder what story it would tell. Not just of events, but of emotions. Of attachments. Of the truths we may not even have words for.

I’ve found that fear has a role in creativity.

We often treat it as something that blocks us, but sometimes, fear is just a sign pointing to what matters most.

We fear losing things because we care. Because they shaped us. Because without them, we’re not sure who we’d be.

So maybe photography isn’t just about preserving a view.

Maybe it’s about trying to hold onto a part of ourselves, too.

I sometimes think of wild places I’ve photographed and wonder: am I afraid of these landscapes disappearing? Or am I more afraid of forgetting how it felt to stand there?

To hear the silence.

To feel the cold.

To remember what it asked of me.

Maybe I photograph these things not just because they’re beautiful, but because I’m afraid of the part of me that fades when I’m far from them.

Maybe you do that too.

We talk a lot about inspiration in art, but not enough about the quiet grief underneath some of our choices. The way we revisit certain scenes. The way we try to freeze time not for glory, but for comfort.

Maybe that’s where the real work begins: not in chasing the most spectacular light, but in noticing why we need to capture it in the first place.

We each have a visual vocabulary, even if we never speak it out loud.

Some people shoot color. Others chase form. Some look for faces in a crowd. Others return again and again to the sea.

In my work, the recurring elements are hard to miss: Mountains. Stars. Ice. The moon. Spaces empty of people. Cold air. Me, mostly alone, small in the frame.

It takes me time to understand those aren’t just aesthetic preferences. They are signals.

The night sky, for example, is more than just something beautiful. It’s a reminder of scale, of perspective. It gives me something I didn’t know I was missing until I started returning to it again and again.

Darkness is not something to run from. It’s where things become more still. Simpler. More honest.

And the solitude in many of my images is not loneliness. It’s a kind of remembering. A way to be close again to an experience.

There is a kind of self-portrait woven into every recurring theme. Even if we never show our face, we are always in our images. In our choices. In what we frame and what we leave out.

So try and look closely at your work. Not just the finished pieces, but the themes that keep coming back.

What are they saying?

I think we often underestimate what beauty does for us.

It softens things.

When I look for beauty in a frame, I’m not trying to make things look perfect. I’m trying to show that even in the cold, in the dark, in the uncomfortable, there is something worth holding onto and capturing.

Maybe beauty is how we say “this is still good”.

This is still here.

Even if just for a moment.

And even if it disappears, we saw it. And we made something out of it.

Sometimes I wonder if we look for beauty not to escape reality, but to connect more deeply with it. To notice what often goes unnoticed. To give weight to things before they're gone.

Because beauty doesn’t last. That’s part of why we chase it.

And when we find it, we don’t always need to explain it. We just need to witness it. To press the shutter. To say, in some way: I saw this. It moved me. I want to remember.

We can’t stop time.

But photography gives us a way to sit with it.

When I photograph a mountain under stars, I know I’m not documenting a fact. I’m marking a feeling.

Sometimes I return to a location over and over again, not because I want to recreate an image but because I want to find something I missed the first time. Or because the person I was back then is different now, and I want to see what’s changed.

Photography doesn’t give us time back but it gives us a way to carry time forward.

So I invite you to look through your own images.

Not just your best ones.

But the ones you return to. The ones you keep without knowing why.

What’s in them?

What keeps showing up?

What are you trying to remember?

What are you quietly afraid of losing?

Maybe that quote wasn’t meant to give us a clear answer. Maybe it’s meant to open a door.

I think fear, in this sense, is not something to avoid.

It’s something to notice. To listen to. And maybe to thank.

Because without it, we might never pick up the camera at all.

Wishing you clear skies, and see you in the next one.

Angel