See the world — and take pictures of it.

A young kid growing up in a sunny, sprawling metropolis of southern California sits far away from home on a lonely wooden pier in the middle of a Louisiana swamp. His feet are small, but his steps are true and emphatic. A strong breeze tumbles in, and the pier sways a little more than one would expect an architecturally healthy pier to sway. He unwinds his legs from criss-cross applesauce and vacates his sitting perch, and stands up pluckily. The semi-rotten, 20-foot-long pier creaks and groans underneath him. A great blue heron squawks in the distance and the wind carries and disperses its guttural call throughout the swamp. But that’s okay. All around - no angle on the compass rose being neglected - the Spanish moss rustle and seem to whistle a wistful tune as they hold fast to the ubiquitous, stalwart old growth cypress trees. Another magical afternoon in the swamp passes by.

You likely have guessed that that kid is me, a young John Pugh at age 6. My mother was born in Los Angeles, my father in Louisiana. As a result, by blood I am effectively half SoCal, half Louisiana Southern. It’s a curious mix, and one that I’ve been able to embrace and appreciate all the more fully due to my experiences of traveling to Louisiana and the bayou to see my family every Christmas. The time in the bayou in Louisiana has shown me that even when a place feels so strange and different at first, if you open your eyes to the world, there’s more homes out there than you might think.

Photography is special to me because it’s like time travel: a photo is a moment in time, frozen. I want to continue to see more, to do more, and to capture more photos of it all. Photography is the one art form where you can literally show people how you see the world, and they can see it exactly just as you do. 

What could be cooler than that?