My Friend Bob

I thought our paths had crossed by coincidence. They hadn’t.



Some friendships make sense from the beginning. You meet someone, you click, and the rest writes itself. Then there are the ones that take years to become what they were always supposed to be. The ones where you look back at the timeline and realize God was connecting dots you could not even see yet.

Bob is that kind of friend.

We first crossed paths around 2010. I was working at an engineering firm and Bob had come in as a private contractor on a large structural project. I am going to be honest here, and Bob already knows this because we have laughed about it plenty of times since. My first impression of Bob was not exactly glowing. Not his structural ability. That was fine. But the scope of what he was taking on, the way he was approaching the whole thing, I was not convinced he knew what he was doing.

Turns out he did not. He will tell you that himself, laughing. And yet somehow he finished the project anyway. That probably should have told me something about Bob right there.

After that project wrapped I did not see him again for years. Life moved on the way it does.

Then I found myself looking at a new position at a company in Burleson. Got hired on and started getting to know the team. There was an engineering manager there I kept talking to. Friendly guy, easy to work with. We got along from day one. It took a while before either of us put it together but eventually we started talking about past projects and realized we had worked together on that same structural job years before. That is when I told him what I had thought about him back then. He laughed and confirmed every word of it.

We worked together for a few years at that company. Then Bob retired and mentioned he was having a house built. Springtown, he said. I nodded and filed it away and honestly did not think much more about it.

Life kept moving. I changed positions again, this time landing in Weatherford. Carrie and I spent about four years living in an RV, just waiting for the right house to come along. When we finally found one it was in Springtown.

Still nothing clicked.

I do not remember now whether I called Bob or he called me, but at some point I mentioned we had found a place in Springtown. He said oh we are in Springtown too, where are you. I told him. He got quiet for a second.

We were less than a mile apart.

After all those years of crossed paths and separate roads and timing that never quite lined up, we ended up less than a mile from each other in a small town in Parker County. Our wives met and hit it off immediately. They are at our family gatherings now. They go to church with us. They are not neighbors anymore. They are practically family.

That is just how God works sometimes. Quietly, over years, without asking your opinion about the timeline.

Now here is where the photography comes in.

Bob had always known I was into cameras. When we worked together the first time around I had just received my first real camera and lens from my Uncle Pete, the gift that started everything for me. When Bob retired he said he was going to get a camera and travel. He did exactly that. And he turned out to be really good at it.

I was still figuring things out.

We started making trips together. Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. The Stockyards. Two guys with cameras walking around shooting whatever caught their eye. Bob did not sit me down and teach me. He did not lecture or explain or hand me a manual. He just shot. And I watched what he pointed his camera at and I pointed mine at the same thing. Teaching by example. That is the only way I can describe it. There is something about standing next to someone who sees well and trying to see what they see. It changes how you look at things over time in ways you cannot fully explain.

One afternoon at the Botanical Gardens I could not get my images sharp no matter what I did. I was frustrated and probably a little embarrassed to admit I was struggling. I showed Bob what was happening. He looked at my settings, showed me what to adjust, and just like that the problem was solved. No big moment. No drawn out lesson. Just a friend helping a friend figure out his camera.

That is also when I started really understanding the exposure triangle. Aperture, shutter speed, ISO. The relationship between the three and how changing one forces you to adjust the others. It is a concept that sounds simple enough when someone explains it to you. Actually feeling it in your hands while you are shooting, understanding instinctively what each adjustment is going to do to your image before you take the shot, that takes time and repetition and usually someone standing next to you who already knows it in their bones.

Bob knew it in his bones.

The last several months were quieter than usual between us photographically. Bob is a few years older than me and he went through a rough stretch, knee or hip replacements, I cannot remember exactly which, but it was affecting his back and he was hurting for a while. I missed our trips more than I expected to. But I was not going to be the guy who calls him up and says hey let's go walk around the Stockyards for three hours when I knew every step was costing him something. That is not friendship. That is selfishness dressed up as an invitation.

So I waited. Kept shooting on my own. Kept building the business. But I missed having him next to me with a camera.

He is doing better now. Getting around much easier. And honestly I am already thinking about where we go first. Maybe the old stomping grounds at the Botanical Gardens. Maybe somewhere new. Either way I am looking forward to it more than he probably realizes.

But honestly, the photography is almost beside the point.

I call Bob on weekends or on the way home from work. Just to check in. See how he is doing. Ask about his back, talk about whatever is on my mind. Faith. Family. Work. Life in general. The stuff you can only really talk through with someone who has been around long enough to have perspective on all of it. Bob has that. He is a few years older than me and he has lived enough to know that most of the things we stress over have a way of sorting themselves out, and most of the things worth holding onto have nothing to do with a job title or a bank account.

He is not always easy to catch. Some days I call and get no answer because he is out in his backyard working on something. The man does not slow down. He is out there digging or building or fixing something, always moving, always doing. Other days I call and he picks up right away and I can practically hear the couch in his voice. He reads a lot. Good books, the kind that make you think. We talk about that sometimes too.

I do not hang out with a lot of people. That is just honest. I am an introvert working a full time job and building a photography business on nights and weekends with a family I want to actually be present for. My social circle is small by design. But Bob has always been someone I can call when something is sitting heavy on me and I need to hear a voice that is not going to tell me what I want to hear just to make me feel better. He is straight with me. Gentle about it, but straight. That is a rare thing.

When he and his wife travel, and they travel a lot, I always look forward to seeing the photos when they get back. He shoots everything. Landscapes, architecture, street scenes from places I have never been. There is something about seeing the world through someone else's lens, especially someone whose eye you respect, that makes you want to go see it yourself someday. His travel photography is a whole other side of him that I genuinely admire.

But where Bob really shines is bird photography. The man has a gift for it. Patience, timing, the ability to anticipate a moment before it happens. He has tried to pass that along to me more than once and I appreciate every bit of it. But I have made my peace with the fact that bird photography is his lane and not mine. Some things you try, respect deeply, and then hand back with both hands. That is me and birds. I will stick to people and leave the herons and hawks to Bob.

Some of my favorite afternoons have been the two of us just wandering around with cameras not saying much, shooting and comparing, shooting and comparing. But some of my most important conversations have happened on a phone call somewhere between Weatherford and home with nobody around and nothing but road ahead of me. That is where a lot of the real stuff gets said.

I do not take for granted what that friendship has meant to my photography or to my life. The first meeting that did not impress either of us. The years apart. The job that brought us back together. The mile of road between our front doors that might as well not exist.

Some things are just meant to be. You just have to wait long enough to see it.