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Remembering 911 · the Visual Historian - "A Photographer's Journey"

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Alright guys, welcome back to the Visual Historian Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's Friday, September 11th, 2026.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now even though this music has me in a positive mood and it's Friday, I'm ready for the weekend.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: I can't help it.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is 9-11.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's all over the TV, the news, documentaries.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's doing their best that we never forget about that horrible, horrible tragedy.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um today is just more of a recollection of of what happened.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody knows where they were, everybody has their own stories, you know.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's wild.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, I was at our state photography convention over uh in Baton Rouge.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in the hotel room.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're splitting a hotel room with a buddy of mine.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he was in the morning.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: We were just, you know, getting ready to go to the seminar.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I always watch the today show.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I it's just it's great.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's news and more.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I had it, I had it on, and when I turned the TV on, one of the towers, that's when the first plane hit.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I did it was the first plane hitting was not on the news.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the smoking tower was on the news, and the news broke as far as a plane flew into the building.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So at first, I'm yelling at Daryl, he's getting out of the shower, and I'm like, Daryl, you gotta come see this.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, see what?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, some idiot flew into a building.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: What I mean, the twin towers, one of the biggest towers, biggest buildings in New York, a plane went into it.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, What kind of plane?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going, I don't know.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: They haven't said yet.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we're watching it unfold and it's smoldering, and you know, people's uh talking to people or starting to filter to the news and stuff to realize that this was a passenger plane, like you know, an airliner.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, How is this possible?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Did they did they lose all controls?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like you saw talking about how is this even possible?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, holy cow, that had to be horrible of whatever happened inside that cabin that they accidentally flew into a building.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's horrible.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And as Daryl is out of the shower, he's looking at the TV screen like I am.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: That first building was just smoldering away with the smoke.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as we're watching it on TV, that second plane comes across the screen from the left to the right and just pie eyes right into the second building.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's when Daryl and I looked at each other and we were like, holy shit, that that was that was not an accident.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: What the hell is going on?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, and that's that's when your world changed.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it was smoldering for a long time both buildings, um a very long time before the first one came down.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget that when that building came down, that was the conversation of the rest of the day.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Was I didn't think jetliner fuel, jet fuel could melt those beams.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And even if it did, it was the top part of the building.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: How did I mean guess it was enough weight coming down, which doesn't make any sense because it was already standing for how many decades?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So how did it how did it come down?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: That was the absolute talk of the whole town.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then we saw it, and we went to this seminar, and then we uh, you know, the first speaker was like, hey, we're all gonna, we're all gonna go home.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: We need to be with our families.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, there's a lot more going on than than we know.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the seminar is done.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we did.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody drove home.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And immediately you start thinking, oh my God, I have friends in New York.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I hope they weren't in the building, hope they weren't within the blocks around it.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was terrible.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So fast forwarding to all of the trauma that you know New Yorkers were going through, the rest of the country and the world who had people who live over here, family and friends and business people, and just people you know, everybody's hearts were thinking of New York.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, here in New Orleans, um, we the city raised a million dollars that went to New York, um, I forget how many weeks later.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't long at all.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it was to um rebuild one of their fire trucks since many were lost.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you just did everything you could to be involved, you know, to feel like you're helping.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the discussions of the of what the hell happened never really stopped.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, every time I talk to somebody about the architectural physics of it all, it kind of doesn't make sense.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: It really doesn't.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, uh, this isn't what I do for a living.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I I don't know facts beyond assumptions, and everybody knows uh stories beyond stories can just get convoluted all over the place, and reality becomes fiction, you know, and then fiction becomes conspiracy theories.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's one of those things where like my dad was in Vietnam and he told me, he goes, on that one day we lost 2,800 people.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was more than we lost in the Vietnam War.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh on on a given day.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: That it's just unbelievable.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Just unbelievable, you know?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So today is remembrance.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: The one thing that positively, if you if you need to find a positive angle of the silver lining in the cloud, what came out of that day was for a while, for the longest time, it was like we all all Americans just started feeling for humanity, you know, we all felt differently about each other, our country, um, the possibility of war on our soil.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot, man.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot, and here we are today, um remembering and keeping it alive.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's been some great songs, obviously.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Country songs, man.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Country songs are great.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, God, family, and country.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I love it.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, there's some songs that kind of get you a clump every time you hear it still, because you remember where you were, you remember everything.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I remember.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: I remember sitting on the end of the bed looking at that damn screen, and I just could not believe what I was seeing.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, holy cow, this is gonna be one of those stories that even though our kids can watch it on TV, they'll never understand what it felt like to see it happening in real time.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it's no different than my dad talking about Vietnam, I wasn't there.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: My grandfather speaking of the World War, we weren't there.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the effects that it has on you personally um does not transcend to generations.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: The story does, but not that feeling, you know?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that's that's just so important right now because we said we should never forget.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um the person that is in office right now in New York, I'm very surprised um enough people in New York forgot and uh voted him in.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: That yeah, that's pretty interesting.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so not being political.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: It it's just things do change, things do move on.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the one thing that I hope comes out of this podcast today is you know, the never forgetting part for me is more of remembering who lost people that day, you know, who got that last phone call on a voicemail, who's who's replaying that voicemail today, who, you know, is all those things are just horrible.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And every time you do watch the footage and you can see those build those planes go into the building, you can't help but pause the screen and remind yourself that right before the building they're still alive, and then it goes into the building and everybody's world changes.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like never before were we able to do that, you know?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, we have film and stuff, but you know, you know where I'm going with this.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's a lot of history that we cannot replay back.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where we are today moving forward.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the part of net of also never forgetting is just never forgetting how proud it is to be an American, you know, how proud it is to protect this soil, how proud it is to be vigilant, be aware.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're not just a leaf in the wind anymore.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're a twig on a branch, the part of a larger tree called America.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay I I've been teaching my kids this, you know?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Just always be aware aware of your surroundings and be somebody's superhero if you ever get the chance.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's just the greater good of life in general.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, we are sad for all the New Yorkers, but you know, New York is just a place where a lot of people work sometimes, and there's so many people from all around the country in New York.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So this tragic event was not only affected by New Yorkers.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Many people around the country and the world have a tie to this tragedy, and every year this is hard.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is hard, but at the same time, as the decades go on, forgetting it's not it's not forgetting the tragedy itself.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's forgetting that feeling that we all had when it happened.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's what people don't want you to forget.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't do that if you're the next generation behind us.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: You never felt it, you weren't there.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: So never forgetting is it only I kind of feel like it just applies to me, my generation, the people that were here, that went through those feelings, that remembers the anger, the sadness, you know.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, it's Friday.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: We have a weekend ahead of us.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you are a photographer like I am, or you're just a hobbyist, you know, you're not a pro like I am, if you're just a hobbyist, I want you to understand the importance of your job every time you do grab a camera.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, every single thing you take a picture of, everything is in the past, according to time.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you take a picture of something, one second later, that was in the past.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that the coolest thing ever?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just one of it's the biggest reason why I call myself um a visual historian to my clients, because everything that we are capturing, we are able to reminisce of the past, even though it was five minutes ago or it was five years ago.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's still the past.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's still a memory, it's still something that we can't go to again.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Once we're past it, that's it.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, photographers out there understand the importance and the value of what you do.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that sunset, you pulled your car over the road to get your iPhone out and just take a good picture of a damn sunset.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's because you wanted to remember it.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: But when you show that sunset to somebody else that was not there, they won't feel what you felt when you saw that sunset.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you were in awe, you were emotionally driven.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Some song was on the radio, maybe you were having a bad day and it was a sign.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're having a fantastic day and that was a sign.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you were waiting for a new timeline for God to put you on, and that sunset just felt like perfect timing.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is why art in the eyes of the beholder is a thing.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you having having a camera working for yourself is therapy.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it's therapy.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love photographing non-people.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's the best way to put it.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's street, whether it's landscape, whether it's nature, like everything visual to me is a picture, and everything visual has an emotion to it.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the part that blows me away and encourages me so much is how these pictures affect everybody else differently.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and none of these people were there.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: So for you to capture an image in a way that somebody else looking at it understands your feeling, that is so powerful and very difficult to duplicate.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Very difficult to duplicate.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Usually, these things that are in the moment, they're your moment, you know.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So when I am sharing imagery on Instagram or whatever it is, usually it's because I'm proud of that shot.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I was there, the person was there, the bride was there, whoever was in that room, whoever was hearing the same song, you know, it was like weddings are beautiful because there's a lot of shared moments together, because we're in the ceremony area, we're in the party area, you know.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I just want you going into this weekend realizing photography is a is a lot more than just a hobby, you know, you are doing something pretty amazing if you think about it, even on the smallest terms.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: The simple fact that you are capturing something that happened according to time, and then you experiencing that moment that you captured will always affect you differently than somebody else looking at the picture.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the same thing goes for when you are taking pictures for your clients.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're like me and you're a working pro, you know, when you're capturing human moments, um, those moments for the people that you're working for, they're gonna feel very different than you did.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they may be a million times more attached to the image of you know, her grandfather that was looking out the window, and I just took this picture of him looking out the window just because it was so cliche, you know.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: It it just looked like a print competition image.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like here's the guy looking out the window.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is he looking into his past?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is he seeing his future?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is he replaying his life?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how old is he?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is he dealing with an illness?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Did he lose his wife?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's amazing what a single image can bring to your attention.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: But when the bride sees it, and she starts crying, and I'm like, oh wow, I I knew it was a pretty powerful image, but I I had no idea.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And she was like, No, you don't you don't understand.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: This was the last picture ever taken of him.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, wait, what?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, Yeah, he passed away the following week.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, get out of here.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that is how important this job really is.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not even about the monetary value of what you're charging or what you think it's worth.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: When they say art is in the eyes of the beholder, that emotion is way beyond your eyes.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, your soul is involved, your heart, like everything, you know.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: This one little click of a shot that I got that looked really cool was somebody that was in her life since she was a baby.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: So her attachment to the image is a gazillion times more than what I was feeling, and the reason why I even took the picture.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And every once in a while, when I get that phone call, hey, can we grab a picture that you took from the wedding?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: My uncle passed, you know, it was a good picture, we would love to have it for the funeral to display.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I never ever charge for those pictures.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not a thing.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I just I don't know.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm always just reminded how powerful this job can be, and a lot of it sometimes it's just the greater powers above making sure I get that shot to pass on to his loved ones.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: I really do believe that.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you may look at it now, you're just covering the room, but are you?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: So take this responsibility in a good light.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're doing this as a hobby, man, get out there, take as many as you can.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you're trying to be super duper creative, great, work on that.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: But when something looks cool enough, make sure you get it.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just realizing I have a guy cutting grass right outside my window, like the next one over.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you're hearing it, I apologize.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so listen, happy Friday.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's nothing happy about 9-11, but just remember, we're all Americans, we're all humans, we're all people sharing this life.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I'm gonna get out of here before the lawmore gets closer, and I'm gonna see you on the podcast coming soon.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right, you guys?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: See y'all on Monday.