Postcards from Palo Alto

I was listening to the Prime Lenses Podcast the other day—an episode with Richard Koek. Koek was talking about a postcard project he’s been working on: real postcards, prints of his own photographs, sent through the mail. Something simple and physical, passed from one set of hands to another. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

There’s something wonderfully honest about a postcard. It’s small. It’s humble. It’s tactile. You can hold it, crease it, tape it to a fridge. You can tuck it in a book and forget about it for years. It ages. It softens. It becomes a little artifact of a moment—captured, chosen, printed, mailed.

In a time when almost everything we make as photographers lives behind a glass screen, the idea of a photograph becoming something someone can touch feels almost radical.

Without even looking at his, it made me think:
What would my own version of that look like?

I keep circling back to Palo Alto—my hometown, my daily backdrop, the place I’ve photographed more than anywhere else but have never really “introduced” to anyone. Not formally. Not deliberately. Not the way a postcard does.

So maybe that’s the project:
“Postcards from Palo Alto.”

Little slices of home: the way the early morning light hits the oak trees; the long, quiet streets at dusk; the silhouettes around Gamble Garden; the pockets of stillness on Stanford campus; the way the sky opens up near the Baylands. Moments that feel ordinary until the camera turns them into something more.

There’s a discipline to it that I like already. Choosing a single frame. Printing it. Letting it leave your hands. Trusting it to go where it needs to go. Maybe to a friend. Maybe to a stranger. Maybe to someone who just needs a small reminder that beauty still exists in the everyday.

Koek’s postcards made me realize that photography doesn’t always need to scale. It doesn’t need to “perform.” Sometimes it just needs to travel quietly, one stamp at a time.

I think I’m going to try it.
A slow, steady series.
A handful of photographs at a time.

Postcards from Palo Alto.
A small project with a big heart. Stay tuned.