So she learned how to do it well the first time.

Now, after more than two decades documenting the culture, she reflects on her work with pride. “I really have a thing about telling the story through my photos about our culture,” she says, “and I feel like I’ve captured everything through the years, and did it the best way possible, you know?”

Below is just a small sample of D-Ray’s photos, some never before seen, and her comments about each, edited for length and clarity.

D-Ray: So this was me just looking around the room and seeing these two knuckleheads laugh. You know what I mean? Just seeing them crack jokes there. They’re probably just roasting each other like no tomorrow. If you see Jacka, you can almost hear him laughing.

This picture right here shows Stan and Jack’s relationship. A lot of people might not realize that F.A.B. and Jack are actually close, you know, like friendship-wise, more than just music. But this right here, this is Ramadan. So Jack was definitely fasting that day, and they were probably cracking a joke on how he wanted to eat or something, you know?

D-Ray: This is at Keak’s house in the 70s in East Oakland, during MTV’s My Block. History was being made and I decided to document it. To see them both sitting on a porch in East Oakland, it meant a lot to me. When Sway came to the Town it brought a lot of people out; it showed the love.

D-Ray: So Messy (Marv) got the cover of Showcase magazine; that was actually shot behind Showcase’s office in San Leandro, off East 14th. It’s my very first cover shot. Frank Herrera was like, “D-Ray, you think you can do it?” I was like, “Hell yeah.” Mind you, this was film. You couldn’t see what you were taking pictures of.

This shot ended up in The Source magazine, XXL, this is what got me exposure in the world. Messy Marv welcomed me into the world. Also, Kilo Curt, Mac Dre and Miami The Most showed up to go talk to Gary and Frank because they were working Mac Dre’s record at the time. They saw me doing Messy Marv’s photoshoot, and that’s what got me adopted into Thizz — because Dre was like, “Oh, we need a female photographer.”

D-Ray: We used to have dance battles at Youth Uprising, it was a safe haven. Kids from East Oakland, their parents, folks who weren’t a part of the youth center would come, it was something to do on a Friday night. Those kids, look at them, those kids in the middle row are the only kids that probably go to Youth Uprising. Those other kids are family and friends.

D-Ray: It’s showing East Oakland and both sides of Vallejo. Do you know what I’m talking about? Because I am the official Thizz photographer, and I still have a relationship with people like 40.

I saw it, I took it. I saw the T go up, and it automatically happens. I’ve just got to keep it real. As soon as the T goes up, it just happens. It’s just the way my mental is trained.

D-Ray: I spent like two weeks with Husalah before he turned himself in, and we wanted to get all of his stages, like all of his looks. I mean, he changed his clothes multiple times. We went to the projects, we did all types of stuff, just to make sure he had content while he was in prison.

When he was in prison, I made sure that he was still kept alive. Like, I had good pictures of him. I had press packets. I had whatever we needed. It was a sad situation. I’ll never forget it was like those two weeks.

D-Ray: This is at Youth Uprising (YU). The Jacka would show up anytime I asked Jack to show up.

I have a thing with YU, those are all my kids. I don’t know him as “Ice Cold,” I know him as Gary. You get what I’m saying? Today, knowing his name is Ice Cold, I’ve had to get used to it.

I have a bunch of kids at YU, and I just felt like I had to make sure (Gary) had a picture with my brother and he had that kind of love that my brother could pass off to him… And I just remember, because they were all excited to see Jack there.

Jack would get me in trouble tho, because he would come through smelling like OH MY GOD. Olis Simmons (the former head of YU) would say, “D-Ray, take him outside and spray him down before he comes in here.” I’d be like, “Why Jack, why?” But then, you couldn’t hold that against him. The kids would love him because he’d come in and he’d be himself. Jack would inspire those kids, and bring shirts and talk to them. I think that’s what gave Gary — Ice Cold — so much hope. He makes me very proud. Ice Cold makes me very, very, very proud. To see him glowing in this picture like he is, that’s why I pulled this picture.

Houston, Texas: In a dramatic revelation, local photographer Jason Artique’s deep and insightful Instagram captions have been unmasked as nothing but a collection of trending hashtags. This shocking discovery has overturned his reputation as a profound artist and shaken the Instagram community. 

Artique’s portfolio, lauded for its emotional depth, combined everyday scenes with captions like “Amidst chaos, find serenity #DeepThoughts #UrbanJungle,” now revealed as mere echoes of popular social media tags. His followers, who admired his seemingly philosophical insights, are left feeling betrayed and disillusioned.

Take his viral shot of a chipped coffee mug, paired with the caption “Broken, yet holding the elixir of life #CaffeinatedSouls #FragmentedExistence.” Eagle-eyed fans noticed its uncanny similarity to a hashtag-storm under #MotivationMonday. And who can forget the image of a wilted flower with “Beauty in decay, the transient poetry of nature #EphemeralAesthetics #WitherWithWisdom,” a near-verbatim echo of #ThoughtfulThursday’s musings.

Artique’s admirers, who once revered him as a modern-day philosopher, have expressed their discontent and sense of betrayal. “I thought he was channeling the essence of life, but he was just channeling trending topics,” said one former fan, echoing the sentiments of many.

Artique, amidst the controversy, maintains a defiant stance. “Art is about capturing the zeitgeist, and my captions reflect the collective psyche of our time,” he argued, seemingly undisturbed by the accusations of unoriginality.

Art historians and social media experts are now weighing in on the scandal. “This case opens up a broader discussion about originality in the digital age,” commented a noted art critic. “Where do we draw the line between inspiration and outright appropriation in art?”

As the story unfolds, the art community and social media users are left to ponder the fine line between artistic inspiration and intellectual theft. Meanwhile, Artique continues to post, undeterred, with his latest photo of a raindrop on a leaf accompanied by yet another trending caption, igniting further debate over the nature of art and authenticity in the era of social media.

Nash Pils is a seventeen-year-old junior at Franklin High School. The small Texas town has a population of 1,614, but he is quickly becoming one of its best-known residents.

You see, as ESPN’s Dave Wilson writes, Nash has become a fixture at sporting events and major moments around the town because he is an extremely gifted photographer for his age, routinely capturing moments in ways that make his mentors in the field marvel.

Nash also has Down syndrome, a disability that has defined much of his world beyond the camera’s lens but which has also given him a unique perspective while behind it.

A “fearless” photographer

Nash has loved cameras since he was a kid and would often take pictures at his older brother’s games.

As his parents recount, early on people would see him with the camera and say, “Oh dear, no, give that camera to your parents, you’re going to break that.”

His parents would simply reply, “No he’s not. That’s his job.”

And it’s one he’s excelled at from an early age. He’s won multiple photography competitions.

• Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and family friend Tom Fox said Nash is “fearless” when it comes to taking pictures, adding, “I just love how real and natural his photos are.”
• Hannah White—another of Nash’s mentors—said “he knows what he wants to capture, and he’s not going to let anyone else dictate it to him. He is able to capture people’s happiness, laughter and just true human emotion.”
• White added that “through this process of him being able to get out and be involved with the school and with the community, it’s allowed people to see who Nash is. He is so much more than his Down syndrome.”

For his parents, that last part is what they care about most.

Nash’s mom, Honny, said, “For the first time, it wasn’t the disability. It was the ability.”

A close-up on how God sees you

Wilson’s profile is worth reading, but the part that stands out most is the joy his parents take in watching the community see their son through the lens of his gifts rather than his limitations.

And his story is a good reminder that that’s how our heavenly Father sees each of us as well.

Scripture is clear that not only are each of us sinners deserving of damnation, but that God is keenly aware of our status as well (Romans 3:23). However, it speaks with equal clarity to the reality that we are loved and valued in spite of that fact (John 3:16).

In short:

God is not ignorant of our sin, but our sin doesn’t define us either.

If we have accepted the free gift of salvation that Jesus died to give us, then we are first and foremost children restored to a personal and eternal relationship with the Lord.

Yes, we need to be honest about our shortcomings and repent of the sin in our lives, but the guilt that would try to make those failures the foundation of who we are is not from God.

And the same is true for others as well.

So the next time you are tempted to see either yourself or someone else through the lens of sin, take a step back and ask God to help you look through the lens of his love and grace instead.

After all, if that’s how our heavenly Father sees us, then it’s how we should see ourselves as well.

Aurora lights are shapeless illuminations that dance and swirly randomly but one photographer in Iceland recently looked up and saw the northern lights being “curled.”

This ultra-rare phenomenon is still being studied but scientists believe that what Jeff Dai captured over a volcanic crater is Earth’s magnetosphere rippling like a guitar string — illustrated by the aurora borealis.

Dai says that he witnessed the aurora curls for “several minutes” taking spellbinding video where the green light looks visually similar to a heart monitor in a hospital.

“Imagine that Earth’s magnetic field is like a guitar string,” says Xing-Yu Li of Peking University’s Institute of Space Physics and Applied Technology. “In Jeff Dai’s picture we are seeing vibrations in that string.”

SpaceWeather explains that usually this type of magnetic pulsation can only be seen as a squiggle on a chart recorder. However, Dai captured energized particles from space caught up in the rippling geomagnetic field which caused it to glow with auroral light making it visible as a wave in the night sky.

It is exceptionally rare to see such an occurrence, the magnetic tremors that Dai captured were not picked up by any scientific equipment so there is little else known about the incident.

The magnetic waves are known as ultra-low frequency (ULF) waves and they are most commonly triggered by a gust of radiation from the Sun. These solar winds collide with Earth’s protective shield and can cause the atmosphere to “ring like a bell.”

ULF waves are typically invisible and are only caught by specialized scientific equipment but in rare instances, the solar radiation can penetrate the magnetosphere to create the singular strip of aurora light seen in Dai’s photo.

“It’s still a hot topic for the experts,” Dai writes on his Instagram page. “The specialist told me that the formation of these curl-like structures may be connected with flow shear driven by ultra-low frequency waves.

“These curls are fine structures in the poleward boundary of multiple arcs formed by longitudinal-arranged field-aligned current pairs.”

More of Dai’s work can be found on his Instagram.

Image credits: Photographs by Jeff Dai.