[Music]
when I first picked up a camera the
world looked as it never did before
and you know what it looked like this
sike terrible mirror selfies taken by
14-year old me in 2004 super cute right
and so when I picked up a camera for the
second time in high school my photos
were equally is terrible if not worse
but somewhere in that mix I took this
photo of my cat pepper looking out the
window and I thought to myself the
background is blurry I am an artist but
I also thought to myself hey I stuck
with this long enough maybe I can be
kind of good at this someday my story
isn’t necessarily uncommon I picked up a
camera I took lots of photos and some of
them stood out some of that art it just
made sense it was a happy accident
fueled solely by the idea that if I made
enough photos some of them had to be
okay right it’s over the next few years
my photography changed a lot but what I
couldn’t see at the time is that
photography was changing me because
sitting here in front of you today a
camera has taken me to over 20 countries
while photographing dancers and athletes
and for companies like Disney and for
nonprofits and for weddings I’ve
photographed to this 80 year old in
India and I photographed this 18 year
old in Honduras but another part of the
past 10 years of my life has been
teaching counseling and mentoring high
schoolers as they first encounter the
question what oh what will I do with my
life
are you nervous I am too and I think
it’s at this very point that the phrase
find your passion is shouted back at
them from left and right and up and down
everywhere from their high school
guidance counselor’s to their parents to
their parents very well-informed dinner
guests at that dinner they made you
attend to quotes written in cursive over
cliche stock photos of sunsets can I get
a retweet you know you’ve seen it you
know you have and so I’ve come up with a
metaphor that I think can help high
schoolers navigate this time in their
lives because to me our passions are
just like tools a carpenter puts into
our hands and no matter if we want to be
a teacher or a scientist or a
photographer or an athlete we are all
building piece by piece and at first we
build small just as a carpenter might
build a chair and soon we’ll start
building bigger things
these will feel new and while they’ll
feel foreign they’ll also feel strangely
important because we will have seen our
tears pay off in the results of our hard
work and then come the big builds or and
then we’ll start building bigger and
these things will be a little bit bigger
than things we first built and we will
see how they somehow fit together
just like a table somehow fits perfectly
with those chairs we built earlier and
then come the big builds passion and
hand will try combining many different
things we care about
just as a carpenter would use their many
skills to build a house this will feel
so significant and we will stand back
ever so proudly to look at what we’ve
worked so hard to make but blink and you
might miss the best part that all this
time we’ve been staring down at our
hands and the tools and then we will
have missed our biggest build of all
that all this time we’ve been building a
bridge and that’s a bridge to a whole
new world to a whole new self to new
points of view of beliefs and a
brilliant new list of things we’ll want
to care about because here is the secret
your passions don’t matter they really
don’t it is okay not
to know what you are passionate about it
is actually beautiful because our
passions are just the tools in our hands
they are not our hands and they will
change over time our environments our
communities our friends our college
majors they all will too but there’s a
hidden thread between it all and that
thread is caring caring leads to action
and because you cared your hammer struck
the nail in the first place
see caring not our passions that’s the
real catalyst here caring is the
foundation of courage persistence of
hope caring is the reason Alexander
Hamilton first helped found our country
and why Emma Gonzales stood for every
single high schooler in America when her
classmates were slain but there’s a part
two to this secret equally as important
as choosing to care is choosing what to
care about because pick a care that’s
only for yourself and that will never
work and girl you will eat alone at that
table you built for the rest of your
life but pick a care that’s only for
others that leave no room for self love
no see to that table for yourself well
you will never get to sit down at dinner
and enjoy a bite of the fruits of your
labor ah but what happens when what
we’ve built breaks when what we’ve been
so passionate about when it fails us on
one trip to India a few years back I had
three days of photos sitting on a memory
card that fell off a literal camel’s
back and into the desert never to be
seen again
except for Aladdin on his little magic
carpet someday super cute actually it
was devastating and if I would have
chosen to focus on the broken pieces
will that gets me nowhere but if I can
choose to focus on why I shot those
photos rather than what I’ve shot I can
see that failure it’s just a part of the
process and choosing not to care at all
to never go after anything be one in
life to let comparison in the fear that
we’re never gonna be as good as that
person we just watched on Instagram do
that thing we love well
that is straight-up self-sabotage it’s
the only way we can really let ourselves
down here caring is the real-life
difference between a life filled with
salty from tears on our face happiness
versus a life wondering what it might
have looked like if we would have ever
shown up in the first place just at the
end of the day the most powerful thing
is that caring lets you wonder what if
and that is magical when you were a kid
and you wondered what if that question
led you to touch hot stoves and say LG
my hand is crispy like bacon
probably shouldn’t do that again but it
also led you to try ROM bone and every
flavor of ice cream and to try to swing
even higher on the swing how beautiful
it all looks from up there yeah so
beautiful see many people might view my
care as photography and it’s true I do
care about the photographs I make but I
care far more about the moments I
capture and the people and places that
have opened my mind to new perspectives
those cares that feels limitless because
yes a camera does build my bridge piece
by piece but the world on the other side
that’s why I’m in it at all now more
than ever is the time for you to care
not just for yourself but for the world
around you
the world needs you to care and caring
lets you be a rebel but with a true
cause the best news is caring doesn’t
matter whether you are good or bad at
something it is just happy you are here
so you do me a favor when time changes
the tools in your hands or when you are
so lost when you’re too afraid to pick
up a tool at all will you remember our
time here just a little bit I just want
to reach out into the audience and give
each and every one of you a giant hug
and tell you that as long as you show up
and choose the care that is all that
matters we’ll build our bridges and
we’ll build them together see you on the
you [Music]
when I first picked up a camera the
world looked as it never did before
and you know what it looked like this
sike terrible mirror selfies taken by
14-year old me in 2004 super cute right
and so when I picked up a camera for the
second time in high school my photos
were equally is terrible if not worse
but somewhere in that mix I took this
photo of my cat pepper looking out the
window and I thought to myself the
background is blurry I am an artist but
I also thought to myself hey I stuck
with this long enough maybe I can be
kind of good at this someday my story
isn’t necessarily uncommon I picked up a
camera I took lots of photos and some of
them stood out some of that art it just
made sense it was a happy accident
fueled solely by the idea that if I made
enough photos some of them had to be
okay right it’s over the next few years
my photography changed a lot but what I
couldn’t see at the time is that
photography was changing me because
sitting here in front of you today a
camera has taken me to over 20 countries
while photographing dancers and athletes
and for companies like Disney and for
nonprofits and for weddings I’ve
photographed to this 80 year old in
India and I photographed this 18 year
old in Honduras but another part of the
past 10 years of my life has been
teaching counseling and mentoring high
schoolers as they first encounter the
question what oh what will I do with my
life
are you nervous I am too and I think
it’s at this very point that the phrase
find your passion is shouted back at
them from left and right and up and down
everywhere from their high school
guidance counselor’s to their parents to
their parents very well-informed dinner
guests at that dinner they made you
attend to quotes written in cursive over
cliche stock photos of sunsets can I get
a retweet you know you’ve seen it you
know you have and so I’ve come up with a
metaphor that I think can help high
schoolers navigate this time in their
lives because to me our passions are
just like tools a carpenter puts into
our hands and no matter if we want to be
a teacher or a scientist or a
photographer or an athlete we are all
building piece by piece and at first we
build small just as a carpenter might
build a chair and soon we’ll start
building bigger things
these will feel new and while they’ll
feel foreign they’ll also feel strangely
important because we will have seen our
tears pay off in the results of our hard
work and then come the big builds or and
then we’ll start building bigger and
these things will be a little bit bigger
than things we first built and we will
see how they somehow fit together
just like a table somehow fits perfectly
with those chairs we built earlier and
then come the big builds passion and
hand will try combining many different
things we care about
just as a carpenter would use their many
skills to build a house this will feel
so significant and we will stand back
ever so proudly to look at what we’ve
worked so hard to make but blink and you
might miss the best part that all this
time we’ve been staring down at our
hands and the tools and then we will
have missed our biggest build of all
that all this time we’ve been building a
bridge and that’s a bridge to a whole
new world to a whole new self to new
points of view of beliefs and a
brilliant new list of things we’ll want
to care about because here is the secret
your passions don’t matter they really
don’t it is okay not
to know what you are passionate about it
is actually beautiful because our
passions are just the tools in our hands
they are not our hands and they will
change over time our environments our
communities our friends our college
majors they all will too but there’s a
hidden thread between it all and that
thread is caring caring leads to action
and because you cared your hammer struck
the nail in the first place
see caring not our passions that’s the
real catalyst here caring is the
foundation of courage persistence of
hope caring is the reason Alexander
Hamilton first helped found our country
and why Emma Gonzales stood for every
single high schooler in America when her
classmates were slain but there’s a part
two to this secret equally as important
as choosing to care is choosing what to
care about because pick a care that’s
only for yourself and that will never
work and girl you will eat alone at that
table you built for the rest of your
life but pick a care that’s only for
others that leave no room for self love
no see to that table for yourself well
you will never get to sit down at dinner
and enjoy a bite of the fruits of your
labor ah but what happens when what
we’ve built breaks when what we’ve been
so passionate about when it fails us on
one trip to India a few years back I had
three days of photos sitting on a memory
card that fell off a literal camel’s
back and into the desert never to be
seen again
except for Aladdin on his little magic
carpet someday super cute actually it
was devastating and if I would have
chosen to focus on the broken pieces
will that gets me nowhere but if I can
choose to focus on why I shot those
photos rather than what I’ve shot I can
see that failure it’s just a part of the
process and choosing not to care at all
to never go after anything be one in
life to let comparison in the fear that
we’re never gonna be as good as that
person we just watched on Instagram do
that thing we love well
that is straight-up self-sabotage it’s
the only way we can really let ourselves
down here caring is the real-life
difference between a life filled with
salty from tears on our face happiness
versus a life wondering what it might
have looked like if we would have ever
shown up in the first place just at the
end of the day the most powerful thing
is that caring lets you wonder what if
and that is magical when you were a kid
and you wondered what if that question
led you to touch hot stoves and say LG
my hand is crispy like bacon
probably shouldn’t do that again but it
also led you to try ROM bone and every
flavor of ice cream and to try to swing
even higher on the swing how beautiful
it all looks from up there yeah so
beautiful see many people might view my
care as photography and it’s true I do
care about the photographs I make but I
care far more about the moments I
capture and the people and places that
have opened my mind to new perspectives
those cares that feels limitless because
yes a camera does build my bridge piece
by piece but the world on the other side
that’s why I’m in it at all now more
than ever is the time for you to care
not just for yourself but for the world
around you
the world needs you to care and caring
lets you be a rebel but with a true
cause the best news is caring doesn’t
matter whether you are good or bad at
something it is just happy you are here
so you do me a favor when time changes
the tools in your hands or when you are
so lost when you’re too afraid to pick
up a tool at all will you remember our
time here just a little bit I just want
to reach out into the audience and give
each and every one of you a giant hug
and tell you that as long as you show up
and choose the care that is all that
matters we’ll build our bridges and
we’ll build them together see you on the
you [Music]
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