There’s something slippery about music. It only exists in the moment you hear it: a note played, a voice lifted, a melody passing through the air and then disappearing. You can't just press pause and hold onto it the way you can with a photograph or a painting. Sure, you can replay a song, but the moment has already moved on.

And yet, here is a photograph of music.

I shot this years ago for an editorial piece about music and the internet. Even then, I knew the image wasn’t just about that assignment. It’s stayed with me, never quite settling into one story. It’s bold and powerful, and there’s something elusive about it that keeps bringing me back.

The image gives us only a glimpse: the curve of her chin, her lips slightly parted, caught mid-note—or maybe mid-breath. The microphone in front of her, with its vintage curves, feels like it belongs to another era. The electric pink background feels unmistakably modern. Pop music, maybe. But there’s something in her expression that hints at something deeper.

I’ve never been able to give this image a title. Maybe it doesn’t need one. Like music, it’s hard to pin down. Sometimes, what we can’t hear is just as powerful as what we can.

In the fall of 1983, the top floor of a damp old warehouse along Seattle’s waterfront was alive with sound. Rick Parashar sat behind the keys. His brother Raj hummed quietly as he searched for the right melody. Colin played guitar, and Ben was on bass.

The four of them had been playing together for years—since middle school—and I was stepping into their territory. I was there to audition as the drummer for the band, Fire and Faster. I had no idea that the audition would bring me into the orbit of one of the most creative people I would ever know.

Long before his name appeared in the liner notes of some of the most important records to come out of Seattle, Rick was simply Rick to me: intensely musical, curious, generous, and always listening for something other people might miss.

He would go on to help shape the sound of Seattle rock and grunge. He worked on records that became more than commercial successes—they became part of the culture. Temple of the Dog remains my personal favorite, but his work also included Pearl Jam’s Ten, Alice in Chains’ Sap, and albums by Blind Melon, 3 Doors Down, Nickelback, and many others.

Rick wasn’t just sitting behind a console. He was a musician himself, contributing piano, organ, percussion, and other musical ideas to the records he worked on. He understood that production wasn’t simply about capturing what a band played. It was about helping the band discover what the song could become.

Producers like Rick are rarely given the same attention as the musicians whose records they help create. Their names are often tucked away in the liner notes, even when their fingerprints are all over the music. But their influence is everywhere—in the songs that become the soundtrack to our lives, in the memories those songs stir, and in the creative risks they make possible.

Rick died suddenly in late summer 2014. He was only 50.

There are days when I miss him deeply.

When I look at this portrait, I don’t just see the celebrated producer Rick Parashar became. I see the old friend I knew before any of that happened.

And I’m reminded that the people who shape our lives are not always the ones standing in the spotlight. Sometimes, they’re the ones listening carefully from just behind it.

Take a moment to remember the friends and mentors whose lives and work have shaped you. Share their stories. Keep their legacies alive.

Sometimes, a small moment can change the direction of your entire life.

This photograph was taken in the summer of 1985, when I was a music major taking a few photography classes on the side. The year before, U2 had released The Unforgettable Fire. The photograph on the album cover stopped me in my tracks. I was obsessed.

When I showed the album cover to my photography professor, I asked the question only a curious but clueless college student could ask: “How'd they do that?”

The answer was infrared black-and-white film. Of course, I had to try it.

That summer, I went home to Nampa, Idaho. The days were long and nights short, filled with family dinners, old high school friends, and our Old English Sheepdog, Gretchen, who looked just plain wrong sporting her summer buzz cut.

One morning, Gretchen and I jumped in my truck and headed into the Owyhee Mountains, bound for the ghost town of Silver City.

The drive back down the mountains was wonderful. A wide-open sky stretched over the high desert, and the landscape opened out below me. The Snake River wound through the plains in the distance, carving its way through the dust. I remember thinking how beautiful it was.

I stopped the truck, jumped out, and began photographing the landscape with infrared film loaded in my camera. Gretchen hopped out and wandered around while I worked.

Then, just as I was halfway through the roll, she wandered into the frame and stood there, looking out over the vista.

I took the shot.

About a month later, back at school, I developed the film. When I saw that shot on the proof sheet, that was it. My days as a music major were over.

In the mid-1990s, I was handed an assignment that felt almost too good to be true. Victor Zaud, who was helping create the first website for Post Ranch Inn, needed photographs that captured what it felt like to be there.

The assignment took me to Big Sur for three days and nights, with all expenses paid. My job was simple enough to describe: come back with photographs that told the story of the place.

I exposed a lot of film during those three days. Perched above the Pacific Ocean, Post Ranch Inn offered no shortage of things to photograph. There were the obvious subjects—the architecture, the views, the food—but I found myself drawn to quieter details.

These two images have always remained among my favorites.

What I like about these photographs is that they don’t show the obvious. There are no sweeping coastal views, architectural hero shots, or elaborate meals. And yet, to me, they feel unmistakably like Post Ranch Inn.

They evoke the atmosphere I remember: serene, grounded, and entirely its own.

If you’ve been there, perhaps these images will bring back a memory. If you haven’t, perhaps they’ll give you a small sense of why the place stayed with me.