Twenty years ago today

Reflecting on two decades of FlakPhoto

Jul 16, 2026

A portrait of the blogger as a young man. Yours truly, photographed by Tema Stauffer, Rutledge Street, Madison, Wisconsin, year unknown.

"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work." Mary Oliver

Hey, friends, I’m celebrating a small milestone this week. On July 16, 2006, I launched the original flakphoto.com blog. Does anyone remember that?

Those early days were exciting: the blogosphere was percolating, and social media hadn’t yet rotted our brains. I got my first taste of Web 2.0 by dabbling on LiveJournal and chatting with photographers on Google Groups. One day, I had an idea to launch a photoblog featuring a new artist each day — it would be fun and creative, a way to learn about photography and the people who practice it.

Voilà! FlakPhoto was born.

Back then, it was incredibly novel to put out a line and receive emails from around the world. Kristen and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment on Rutledge Street, and I vividly remember waking up each morning to log into my Gmail and see the pictures people had emailed me from across the globe. Isn’t that quaint?

I’ve learned a lot about photography and myself over the past two decades. At first, I thought FlakPhoto was a way to get somewhere I was trying to go in the photography world. I’m not sure what I was looking for — some kind of “career success,” I suppose. But twenty years of doing this work taught me that photography is a practice of attention. Photography is good for you. Imagemaking is a journey that shouldn’t be focused on a destination.

FlakPhoto has become a way of life for me, a way to engage with photography and photographers. Doing it feeds my creative mind a little each day. Writing for you is nourishing and feels good. It makes me happy. For that, I’m grateful.

In retrospect, FlakPhoto changed my life. I have always loved pictures and people, and this project has introduced me to more rewarding friendships than I can count. The original FlakPhoto blog died years ago. Not long after, I started writing FlakPhoto Digest, my photography newsletter. In 2022, I rebooted it on Substack, and it continues to connect me with creative people around the world.

I appreciate our photo community more than almost anything, and your images and ideas sustain and inspire me every day. Thank you, as always, for being here and for sharing your work with me. I’ll keep going if you will!

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