Journal

The season between green and smoke

Lethbridge gets a brief season when the coulees are green and the evenings are long. Wildfire smoke is turning clear air into one more condition that has to arrive at exactly the right time.

Signs of life in Coleman

A scouting walk through Coleman’s historic downtown, where restoration work, new restaurants and everyday street life share the same few blocks.

The cost of keeping the work

AI's appetite for storage is reaching into camera bags and editing suites. For creators, keeping the work is becoming a workflow decision, an archive policy, and a line item.

How to tell if AI wrote it

Your audience has developed detection skills through exposure, not deliberate study. They can't always articulate what feels off. But they know.

Investment attraction is a trust problem

When every region offers roughly comparable incentives and roughly comparable amenities, the differentiating factor isn't the package anymore. It's trust.

Your talent attraction video shows the wrong thing

Drone shots over a downtown core. A montage of smiling people at a farmers market. These videos are everywhere. They're expensive to make. And with rare exceptions, they don't work.

Wednesday nights in the darkroom

Twelve frames of 120 film, a Wednesday night at the CASA darkroom, and what slow seeing taught me about the hollow parts of fast, AI-assisted work.

The friction problem

The real problem isn't AI. It's the friction. And the best use of any tool is to get out of the way so the work that requires you has more room to breathe.

The saturation problem

When everyone has access to the same efficiency gains, the gains cancel out. What you're left with is a louder room and a shorter attention span.

The authenticity premium

At the same moment AI-generated content is flooding every platform, consumer trust in branded content is dropping. Those two trends aren't a coincidence.

The RFP process is failing creative work

The creative services vendor pool is shrinking. Not because there's less talent, but because experienced studios are doing the math and opting out.

On posting less, writing more

Why the canonical home matters when the platform moves under your feet.

Why the grain stayed

A short defence of the noisiest layer in every photo I publish here.