Recovery of Stolen Gear calls for GoFundMe (as well as alternatives)

Earlier this month, a troubled human smashed my car window and stole about $6000 USD worth of camera equipment, as well as my passports. It's been quite the emotional, exhausting, and slightly traumatic experience. I had never been robbed like that prior. Doing much better now, on all fronts except the financial loss.

^The night it went down...

Silver lining: I wasn't harmed and all the data on the memory cards - wedding photos from the day before, at that - had been backed up. Phew. This fundraiser will help me recovery the gear steadily in the coming months while I utilize a set of loaner cameras and lenses (huge thanks to Nikon and a friend) to keep shooting for paid gigs as well as pro-bono documentation and visual storytelling projects domestically and internationally for the next few months.

Before I dig into the plan in some more detail, here's an excellent update/plot twist - both the stolen passports have, miraculously, been mailed back to my parents' home by the US Postal Service with only a note stating that the article "has been found damaged and/or loose in the mail."

Woah!! Magic is real.

A good number of you reading this likely would have also read my letter to the thief (yes, I did text it to him) (if you haven't read it yet, may I recommend that you do so). Could he/they actually have an ounce of human heart and turned them in? Or could it be that he/they realized later that the passports were part of the stolen goods, deemed them worthless, and simply tossed them somewhere, while another good samaritan picked up and turned them in? A mystery we may never find out...

Here's what's been happening - my friend Jill, who works for Nikon as the regional Pacific Northwest (PNW) representative, read about the incident and reached out to me immediately. She said she could get me some loaner Nikon gear to keep shooting while I recuperate physically, mentally, and financially. Not long after, she proactively told her boss who I am and what types of projects I typically cover, and asked if I could borrow the set for a longer period of time AND travel abroad with them. Her boss said yes! This is pretty huge in helping buy some time.

^ Me being THRILLED to be able to keep shooting with some fresh loaner Nikon cameras + lenses for the time being

^ This is Jill, she's my fairy godmother right now.

Also, 2 other friends - Brandon from Los Angeles and Luke from Atlanta - messaged me within days and offered to send their unused/setting-in-the-closet Canon DSLRs and lenses to me. Incredible! So now, strangely, I am rocking both Nikon + Canon (I was Sony + Canon before), and my brain feels like it's playing Sudoku in adapting to new menus, button layouts, ergonomics, lens selections, etc. - though not at all complaining! 😉

In the past 3 weeks, I have successfully re-applied for and received a new passport (because who could have thought they would return?!), fixed the broken window, sold my remaining Sony + Canon gear, and have begun re-investing towards a fresh, primarily Nikon-oriented setup. The mental-emotional-spiritual support I have received from friends-family-community near and far have helped tremendously, but truth be told, the financial hit hurts pretty darn hard. The main Sony camera was the largest single-item investment I've ever made in my little business, and that happened only 3-4 weeks prior to the theft. I've regardless been slightly reluctant in getting a GoFundMe going, but with all the upcoming travels and volunteering coming up, having additional financial support to pave the way for a full kit recovery would be massive. Thanks to several of you asking me directly to set one up, here we are!

Here is the breakdown of what were stolen:

I can't quite spell out exactly what and how much all the replacement gear will be yet, so I've set a humble amount of $3500 as my starting goal here on GoFundMe.

Here's my thinking process - I receive a sweet $300 per month from 45 contributing patron on patreon, and feel great about having that cushion every month as I continue to seek paid work. I would like folks to consider the idea of recurring support (it goes SO far beyond the $2/4/8/16/etc. per month), while also point to the fact that I would be HUGELY delighted to have you browse and order a print or two for your home and/or another loved one through the still-unofficially-announced prints shop right on my website(!). Say WHAT? That's right - I've delayed the announcement for some time, but believe that now is the moment. #subtledreamPrints is LIVE and let it be known that right here right now if you reside in (or wish to ship to a friend in) the states or Canada, photographic prints as small as 4x6" up to 24x36" or even larger panorama sizes can be ordered right off - you guessed it - subtledream.com!

Bottomline: I would like you to get something in return on top of knowing that you're (really, truly) helping me out here.

After all those words, here are the 3 ways to contribute:

• A direct, one-time donation on GoFundMe

• Buy a print (or 2, or 3...) on subtledreamPrints (US + Canada addresses only)

• Become a patron of my work on Patreon (and receive (massive) discounts on prints depending on your tier of support!)

^ Some recent prints and framings for clients/friends! 😀

With gratitude,
Jonathan

PS: having community support has been by far the greatest external source I could draw strength and motivation from. You guys know who you all are - big, immense love and gratitude to you.

A film born out of 4 years, 5 trips, and 12 months on the ground with Conscious Impact

Here it is. This is my most important and longest project to date. 4 years, 5 trips, with nearly 12 months of being on the ground with the Conscious Impact team & community in Nepal working, planning, building, filming, and editing. This is our most complete story and showcase of our projects, community, and intentions since the beginning as well as moving forward.

Please turn your sound on (headphones or quality speakers recommended!), and try to set aside about 9 minutes without interruptions. I (we) would love, love to hear what your thoughts and reactions are after. Leave a comment right here, DM me, share it near and far!

A tremendous shoutout to Orion Haas + Allen Gula in their foundational work and connections leading us to that part of Nepal where we've made lifelong friends and connections to the land. To Beth Huggins, Mariana Jimenez Dela Nait, Greg Robinson, and Alyson Noele Sagala for all of the untold and uncountable hours of devotion, love, and courage to keep marching forward year after year since our humble beginnings. To Rose Flanigan, my office mate on the terraces then, and always in spirit. Thankful for Narayan Bhattarai, Haribol Bhattarai, Kumary Tamang Bomjan (and dozens of other Nepali community members, really) for their openness and warmth in welcoming and working alongside us for 4+ years now learning and expanding together. This video and project also wouldn't be possible if it weren't for dozens more family members, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers of a network spanning across our earth providing spiritual, financial, and physical contributions through time and space. Could not possibly tag and name all of you. Thank you.

Huggee love and gratitude to my 45 patrons (http://patreon.com/subtledream) in the last year especially in helping to sustain ME to bring this to life. Folks contributing at $4/month or higher have their names forever embedded into our video.

If you feel connected to our mission and vision, it’d be awesome to have you join our sustainer team. I have just joined it myself a couple weeks back. 🙌🏽

🎬 Please share this magic! 🎬

Become a sustainer: https://classy.org/give/117738/#!/donation/checkout
More about Conscious Impact: http://consciousimpact.org

Well, this is a helluva new year present.

In June of 2018, after months of considerations, brainstorming, writing, revisions, feedback-seeking, and video recordings, I launched my Patreon page. Patreon is, simply put, a subscription-based platform that gets artists and content creations paid.

After years of taking my craft as a professional hobby rather than truly owning it as a service provider and small business owner, and years of providing free or way-too-cheaply-compensated gigs (which I don't regret, just a fact), this is one of the steps in which I am intentionally taking to shift my scarcity mindset towards money and bringing in abundance in multiple forms in my life.

I realized while in New Zealand this mental conditioning that has perpetuated for much of my life is partially the reason I almost feel allergic to money, and that I consciously and subconsciously have been molded to believe that money IS the root of many evils, and somehow if I were to become financially successful, that status would somehow negatively alter my being and bend my moral values. I think it's safe to say most if not all of us have seen examples in the media pointing to how money taints politics, businesses and personal decisions, and that someone "changes" when they become "rich and famous." There is something extraordinary about these messages and their underlying tone about and/or subliminal jab at being well-off.

So without deviating too far from the point of this post, in my opinion and perhaps still far too simply put - there's a deeply rooted connection in the psychology of capital(ism) to our instinctive, primal selves, along with the commodification of basic needs as well as desires in modern economic systems that have brought us here. Money has become our ledger, backed by our mutual trust of value for one another, and we've forgotten that in the end it's made for one simple action: exchange.

OK, what I am getting at is this: I wanna radically transform the way in which I perceive, utilize, and leverage money. I (we) can't fully be immune to it, and it certainly isn't going away anytime soon. I wrote this on my Patreon page and touched on it in the video, but the past 6 months have made it more clear than ever - the abundant life I wish to attract and uphold requires capital - social, environmental, AND economic capital - and this tripod isn't gonna stand very well with just 2 strong legs. In recent years I've strengthened the social and environmental pillars quite well, and now it's time to put more conscious effort into that 3rd leg.

It's gonna take some time. Undoing 32+ years of mental conditioning and perception is difficult, and thank you Pachamama I've had some solid mentors and resources to help me out recently.

And really it starts with this. This Patreon page has been instrumental. I've had 45 people hop onboard to co-create with me a more beautiful perspective, a more beautiful window to the world world we know deep inside is possible through stories, art, and media through my eyes and mind as well as those I collaborate with. I've had these people put enough trust in me to willingly put their hard-earned capital and say, 'yes Jonathan, take this value to recreate more value out of it.' They've made me feel like a bloody alchemist!

Sometimes I don't know if gratitude is even enough.

But truly, I am utterly grateful, and wish to take this moment as I continue to take time to evaluate what 2018 has added to my life, and what 2019 will bring (and has already brought) to express gratitude to the following humans for making this time of transition - with much resting on the condition of my mother's health - significantly less financially-stressful while allowing me to eat and live well as I continue to work on content for Conscious Impact and for myself: 
Kelly Pi
Rieki Cordon
Luke Fernandez
Emily Barnes
Otis Skipper
Kweku Secundus
Evan Speckles
Orion Haas
Mikey Leung
Peter Dowson
Ryan Lue
Nai de Gracia
Steph Bird Parker
Steven Moe
Michael Chung
Jacky Cheung
Dora Lee
Renée Dyke
Michelle Cara Kizner
Peter Wells
Ally Carlton-Smith
Kristine Schiman
Lindsay Claverie
Kelsea Lynn
Dana S Wilson
Urška Čebron
Christine Taylor
Carina Fourmyle
Anna Else Pasternak
Aiyana Bailin
Steve Tracy
Nils Folger
Lisa Colligan
Ramona Gastl
Clare McInerney
Kelsey Yates
John Arvin Española
Reynette Busby Rhodes
Eleanor Smith
Guthrie Straw
Obakhan Jones
Tiange Zhang
Candice Young
Maggie Tan
Julie Trieu

🙏🏽

PS: I haven't forgotten my promise to pick up garbage for y'all who are pitching in $2/month or higher. I've been doing it everywhere - India, Vietnam, British Columbia, Nepal, Washington, Oregon, California - at the beaches, on the mountains, in the forest, along the rivers, and right off the sidewalks. I've either forgotten to take pics or I keep forgetting to upload them as part of my recent posts! 🙃

PPS: www.patreon.com/subtledream to learn/see/hear more ✌🏽

Patreon: Impact storytelling, crowdfunded

Friends, sisters, brothers, family, 

As an artist and fellow human who has chosen to walk an unconventional path of life, I've infused creativity into balancing the bills (responsibilities) and the hills (challenges, adventure). Yeah, that's about all the rhythm you'll get out of me. 😉

As a number of you know, I have traveled and taken work and play with me beyond the geopolitical boundaries that separate us. Some of you have also followed the journey via social media and/or kept a line of contact, both of which I appreciate and cherish immensely. If I could attempt to condense these years of travel, learning, and photography, it's this: We humans absolutely have the capacity, and much more in common than we currently believe to co-create a more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible. That food and stories bring people together. And everyone is a student, and everyone is a teacher. 

We live in a bizarrely inspirational yet despairing time in human and earth history. It's perhaps easier than ever to spiral downwards with the myriad of attention-grabbing and tragic headlines in the mainstream channels, and forget the prevailing forces of good, resilience, and beauty that surround us even more often. In recent years, photography to me has evolved to not simply be about immortalizing moments in time, but a medium and channel through which beauty and humanizing, vital stories can be told and reshared. 

In 2013, my organic farm and bicycle journey brought me into a mind-expanding, hands-on look at our local and global food systems, and also into the presence of the Shishalh First Nations in coastal British Columbia, where I witnessed reconciliation and healing through confessions and drumming. The words and songs shared forever echo in my mind and heart. 

2014 took me across the Pacific to SE Asia, where I crossed paths while hitchhiking in Northern Thailand with several indigenous hill tribe young women who quickly became friends and later revealed the traumatizing history of physical and/or sexual abuse in their lives as well as many they know. This led to my first video piece telling the story of my friend Faa and the children she has helped nurture through the organization co-founded with her sister. 

Through the Beacon Food Forest in Seattle from 2015-2016, I took part in and documented this urban regeneration community project that has propagated seeds in the earth as well as in the minds of people of all backgrounds and ages. Many of you also know that from mid-2015, Conscious Impact, Nepal, and the Himalayas entered into my life, and haven't exactly left. 

An invitation from my friend Peter Wells to New Zealand brought me for the past 8 months to live and work down under to further develop my craft as a photo/videographer while further tap into the global mycelial network of earth stewards and do-gooders who don't see economics, business, communities, and nature to be mutually exclusive, but intrinsically interwoven and co-dependent. Shoutouts to the Otakaro Orchard/Food Resilience Network, Ministry of Awesome, Erica Austin, the XCHC team, the Enspiral network, and so many more to have added such deep, invaluable knowledge and connections to my world. 

Travel, service, and photography have helped me discover my purpose, and that purpose at this moment is to not only engage and take active part in seed-planting, light-reflecting, earth and mind-healing projects and initiatives, but also fill the role of storytelling alongside countless others who have been upholding this craft for generations upon generations. I will continue to capture, write up, and create content on stories passed onto me or of personal experiences gathered from wherever life brings me (back) to next. 

Here's my dilemma: all the content I've posted and published have been free, but the creation process of this content isn't free. The gear, the travel, planning, accommodation, food, phone plans, work spaces/internet, writing, editing, hiring talents and services cost money, time, and more. I have countless individuals to thank for their shared resources to have accomplished what I have, especially in recent years. I am wealthy in connections, friendships, have an abundance in joy, quality food, and opportunities. The only major bottleneck is in the finances. I want to remove this bottleneck because that will allow me to make less compromises, and focus more on content creation and collaborations with those who share this vision. 

I value my time and contributions to others and to the world in a monetized society that marginalizes independent artists like myself, and I am determined to be innovative in creating a residual income. I also wish to revisit projects such as Conscious Impact in Nepal, rebuilding, sharing, and documenting our progress and the stories of the incredible people who take part. Along the same note, I want to continue to offer discounted or pro-bono work for individuals and organizations that may not have a budget, yet their stories are equally important, if not more so. 

That's where Patreon comes in. Instead of a one-time contribution on crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, Patreon is set up for reoccurring contributions to sustain my livelihood and creations - and a small trickle from you, and dozens, or even hundreds of supporters to keep the stream flowing and allowing me to keep doing what I am good at and love. In order for me to continue to be of service for others, I need to take care of myself first.

If my work and time has added value to your life, past, recent, present, whether through photos that you've enjoyed, through resonating words, camera and shooting advice, please consider pitching in and ride this train of life with me and many people I'll be sharing this journey with. There are also various rewards that may captivate your interest, so be sure to check out what you'd get in exchange for your monthly contributions. 

Yes, even $1/month. Seriously. Because $1 is able to feed this belly in several parts of the world that I tend to spend time in. And many of you know I like to eat. 😉

I've made a special video for this.
Watch and read more of my vision + what you would get in return at: www.patreon.com/subtledream

With love and gratitude, 
Jonathan

PS: I shared bits of my journey in a PechaKucha talk in New Zealand (thanks again, Erica!), and inspirations from my earlier years and more of my perspectives in this podcast called Seeds: Talking Purpose with Steven Moe (cheers to you Steven!). 

PPS: The idea of an online "tip-jar" has been on my mind for about a year now, but it wasn't until my friend Steve Tracy informed me about Patreon last year that all of this clicked - big thanks, Steve!