Hopper & Burr Soft Opening
The Mission gets a lot of new coffee shops, but most of them feel like they’re trying too hard to be different. Hopper & Burr, which just opened quietly on 18th Street, takes the opposite approach. Clean lines, serious equipment, and a focus on craft over concept. I stopped by during their soft opening week and immediately knew this was going to become one of my regular spots.
What caught my attention first was the La Marzocco machine taking center stage, but what kept me there was watching the barista work. Every movement deliberate, every shot timed precisely, every milk pour done with the kind of attention that turns coffee making into performance art. This isn’t someone who learned latte art from YouTube videos. This is someone who understands that good coffee starts with respecting the process.
A Trip to the Market
There’s something about the golden hour light hitting a busy market that makes me slow down and actually see the people around me. I was wandering through the weekend market in Prague last month when I spotted this woman completely absorbed in browsing through old books. The way the late afternoon sun caught her hat and coat, the concentration on her face, the stacks of books creating this perfect frame around her – it was one of those moments where everything aligned.
Markets are some of my favorite places to photograph because they’re authentic in a way that tourist attractions can never be. People are focused on their actual lives, not performing for cameras. This woman had no idea I was there, completely lost in whatever book had caught her attention. There’s something beautiful about that kind of genuine engagement with the world around you.
The Old Capital
Kyoto hits you differently than Tokyo. Where Tokyo feels like the future constantly arriving, Kyoto feels like the past perfectly preserved. This is Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, reflected in its surrounding pond on a cloudy afternoon that somehow made the gold leaf exterior glow even more dramatically than it would have in bright sunshine. Sometimes the best light isn’t the light you expect.
I spent three days in Kyoto during my Japan trip, and every temple visit felt like stepping into a different century. The Golden Pavilion is probably the most photographed temple in Japan, which usually makes me want to avoid it entirely. But there’s a reason some places become iconic. When you see this building in person, surrounded by these carefully maintained gardens, with that perfect reflection in still water, you understand why people have been trying to capture it for centuries.
The Forests of Sweden
I used to think forests were just backgrounds for other photographs, something pretty to have in the distance behind a subject or a building. But spending a week in central Sweden completely changed my perspective on what wilderness photography could be. This aerial shot, taken from a drone about 300 feet above an unnamed road cutting through seemingly endless pine and spruce, captures something I’d never experienced before: the sheer scale of untouched forest that still exists in Northern Europe.
The road itself becomes almost insignificant from this height, just a thin line of human presence cutting through what looks like an ocean of green. From ground level, that road felt like the most important thing in the landscape, the lifeline connecting small towns through otherwise impenetrable woods. But from above, you realize how small our impact really is compared to the vast wilderness that surrounds it.