What Key Are You In

It was a Saturday morning in Southern California. I was photographing a family of 4 for the first time. People who find me are those who don’t like being on camera or just don’t enjoy performing in general. I made the session playful and worked my way around their home. They had a grand piano and beside it, a tiny toy piano. I took a cute photo of father and daughter playing together. The father was a writer. I remember thinking that felt fitting. At the end of our time together, he had that look I recognize. The surprised relief of someone who expected to perform and ended up just living. He smiled and said it felt like a jam session.

“You’re like a jazz musician.” Those words resonated somewhere deep. I started my artist journey as a music major in college. I quickly realized the rigor required outpaced the passion I actually had for it. I transferred to studio art with a concentration in graphic design.

In my first drawing class, we were asked to draw a sequence — almost like a comic strip. When my professor returned my work her feedback stopped me cold. “There’s a very musical quality to your work.” I was stunned. I had left music behind, but apparently music hadn’t left me. Nothing about the drawing screamed notes or rhythm. But she saw something. The closest thing I can name is theme and variation — a structural principle in music where a melody is stated and then explored, stretched, and played with. I think that’s what she saw.

Here’s the irony. I actually took a jazz piano class, and I was terrible at it. I craved being told what to do. The thought of adding my own flair was terrifying. What if it didn’t work? What if it fell flat? I was completely in my head.

A true jazz musician does the opposite. They use dissonance as a tool. They create through tension. They know their instrument so well and their own style so completely that a jam session with others becomes play. They know when to show restraint and when to show off. They don’t fully know what they’re going to play — but they know exactly what key they’re in. And they dance around that melody masterfully in real time.

While I never became that jazz pianist, the truth I’ve distilled from sitting down at that piano is that if I ever wanted to create that jazz melody, I needed to learn how to get out of my head and into my heart.

Today, I believe that my camera is my microphone. My point of view has become the melody. My clients get to decide what key I’m in, and we create a beautiful jam session together.

The act of being present becomes the work of art.