The Geometry of Becoming

The Camera Doesn’t Lie. Neither Do I Anymore.

I spent three hours at the pier today. Three hours. Pacing. Measuring. Flipping my camera upside down. Walking back to the same spot and shooting it again from a different angle. Deleting half of what I made because it wasn’t right. Starting over.

I came home exhausted and genuinely proud of myself. Not in a loud way. In the quiet, earned way.

The person who stood on that gravel beach today, meticulously measuring distances with his feet, holding his camera upside down just to see what happened? I don’t recognize him from two years ago. I mean that as the best possible thing I have ever said about myself.

And somewhere on that beach with the tide out and the clouds doing their whole dramatic Pacific Northwest thing, I realized I was watching myself do exactly what I’ve been writing about for months.

This Is What It Looks Like to Learn a New Language

I’ve been shooting on the Ricoh GRIIIX at 40mm for a while now. I know this camera. I know how the sensor reads light, how the focal length plays with perspective, what it does in low contrast. We have history.

But multiple exposure work? That’s something else entirely. That’s asking the same camera, the one I know intimately, to do something I never asked it to do before. And honestly? It’s hard as hell.

That’s me right now.

I’m the same person. Same history, same nervous system, same body that’s been through all of it. But I’m asking myself to operate completely differently. To see differently. To produce something different than what I’ve always produced.

And some days it doesn’t align. Some days the exposures don’t stack right and you just have to delete it and try again. That’s not failure. That’s data. That’s love, actually. That’s what it looks like to love yourself enough to keep trying instead of settling for the crooked frame.

The Geometry Was the Point

Here’s the part that I had to actually work for today: the double exposures that look symmetrical? I didn’t get those by guessing. I paced it out. I physically measured the distances, walked to the marked spot, shot the first exposure, walked to the mirrored position, shot the second. Exact. Deliberate. Intentional.

That’s not how I used to live.

This took five attempts. Measuring paces 40 feet apart.

I used to shoot from the hip and wonder why everything came out crooked. I used to move fast and feel like speed was the same thing as competence. I used to mistake urgency for purpose. I used to be a mess, honestly, and I dressed it up as passion.

The symmetry in these photos exists because I slowed down and did the work.

That’s also true about everything else in my life right now. The good stuff I have? I measured for it. I showed up, again and again, to the same spot, until I got it right.

Half of Them Got Deleted.
That’s the Job.

I’m not going to pretend I hit on every frame today. I didn’t. A lot of the multiple exposures were slightly off. The geometry wasn’t quite there. The layers fought each other instead of talking to each other.

I deleted them without drama.

That right there is new behavior. Old me would have kept the bad ones, told myself they were fine, posted them anyway because admitting I missed felt like admitting I was bad at something. Old me confused keeping everything with being productive. Old me was full of shit about that.

New me deletes the shit that doesn’t work and makes space for the shot that does.

I’ve been doing that in my actual life too. Deleting patterns that were running on autopilot. Deleting the versions of myself that existed to keep other people comfortable. Deleting people, places, substances, and activities that no longer benefit me or bring me joy and happiness. Deleting the story that said I couldn’t change.

Making space.

I Turned the Camera Completely Upside Down

Toward the end of the session, standing on the pier itself, I tried something I have never done before. I flipped the Ricoh completely upside down and shot a double exposure that way. No idea if it would work. No guarantee. Just curiosity and a willingness to look like a complete idiot in front of nobody.

It took four attempts. Eight total shots to build those four doubles. Each one slightly wrong. Each one teaching me something about what the next one needed to be. I stood there above those barnacle-crusted pilings making incremental corrections to an idea I’d never tested, refusing to walk away until I knew.

The upside-down double exposure frame is one of my favorites from the whole day.

That image didn’t exist before I was willing to be wrong. Four times.

I am unrecognizable in moments like that. Old me would have tried it once, decided it wasn’t working, and chalked it up to a bad idea. Old me confused quitting early with having good judgment. Old me would have walked off the pier muttering that it was a stupid idea anyway. New me stood on that pier and took eight shots to get one right and felt nothing but curiosity the whole time.

That’s what love looks like when you turn it inward. Not giving up on the frame. Not giving up on yourself. Staying on the pier until the picture you came for actually exists.

The Camera Didn’t Change. The Photographer Did.

Same Ricoh GRIIIX. Same 40mm. Same sensor, same glass, same settings I’ve memorized.

But I’m not the same person standing behind it.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about transformation: you don’t become someone new by getting new tools. You become someone new by learning to use the ones you have in ways you never dared before. Your body is the same. Your brain is the same. Your history goes with you.

What changes is what you’re willing to do with all of it.

Everything composition-wise in these photos is straight off the camera. I only edited color for mood. No tricks. No fixing it in post. What you see is what I made, in real time, standing on the boards with cold water underneath me and clouds going gray overhead.

I didn’t hide anything.

I’m not doing that anymore. Not in photos. Not in life. I am love now, and love doesn’t need to hide.

Everything I Couldn’t See Before

I’ve been coming to this pier for a while. I’ve shot it straight. I’ve shot it golden hour. I’ve shot it in the rain.

But today I found shots here I didn’t know existed. Not because the pier changed. Because I changed enough to see them.

The pier is the same pier. The Bellingham waterfront is the same waterfront. My community is the same community I came back to after a long time away.

I’m the one who’s different.

And that’s the whole thing, isn’t it. I could stand in the most beautiful place in the world and not see a single frame worth keeping if I was still looking through the old lens. The patterns, the noise, the constant static of old ways of being, it blocks the light.

I cleared some of that out. I’m still clearing it. I will probably be clearing it for the rest of my life, and I have made my peace with that because the clearing itself is the work and the work is the point and the point is that I love doing it now. I didn’t used to. I used to resist it, run from it, numb it, burn it all down just to avoid sitting with the discomfort of becoming. I used to blow up everything rather than feel the fucking discomfort of growth for five minutes.

Now I walk to the pier and stand on crunchy low-tide gravel and flip my camera upside down and take eight shots to get one right and I go home tired and full.

That’s what I mean when I say I am love. Not that everything is soft and easy and pretty. That I finally care enough about myself to stay in it. To keep going. To show up to the same pier, the same life, the same body, and keep finding what I didn’t know how to see before.

The photos are in the gallery. They’re all real. So am I.

I am Tukayote.
I am unrecognizable.
I am love.