What I Found When I Started Paying Attention
Week One of Four | A Photo-a-Day for the American Cancer Society
I almost didn’t start.
That’s the honest truth. I announced the challenge, I set the intention, and then I sat with the weight of it — the weight of why I was doing it — and for a moment I wasn’t sure I could follow through. Grief has a way of making even good ideas feel impossible.
But I made a promise. And her name was Intesar Taye.
My Aunt Intesar was a woman who dedicated her life to serving others at United Cerebral Palsy. She was a steady anchor for our whole family — the kind of person who made you feel, without ever saying so directly, that you were worth showing up for. Cancer took her less than a year after we found out she had it. I’m still not fully sure what to do with that.
So I picked up my camera. Because photography has always been how I make sense of the world — how I document love, resilience, and the moments that matter. And for the next 30 days, I’m sharing one photo a day in her honor while raising funds for the American Cancer Society.
This is what week one looked like.
Day 1 — Start Your Engines!
Here’s my first image of the month. On the last day of the Cleveland Auto Show, I got to explore the floor with my son, Abdel, my friend Mike Rich, and his nephew Michael.
It’s been incredible watching Abdel’s interest in cars evolve over the years. Since November he’s had a basic racing sim setup and is already convinced he can drive stick — which, frankly, he may understand better than I do.
But what stayed with me most was the look on his face as he darted from one obscure vehicle to the next — pure curiosity, pure joy. Moments like this matter.
Day 2 — The Man Who Chose People
The first photo I took for this challenge wasn’t a landscape or a self-portrait. It was a man named Ray Strumbly, mid-laugh, in the warehouse of his company.
Ray built Timbers Kovar Company over decades of work. And when it came time to think about the future — when most people would have cashed out, taken the highest offer, walked away comfortable — he chose differently. Working with the OEOC at Kent State University, Ray transferred ownership of his business to his employees. The people who built it with him became the people who own it.
I photographed him with his team in a conference room. Every single person at that table is now an owner.
In a moment where it can feel like the whole world is optimizing for maximum profit at any cost, that felt like oxygen to me. It felt like something Aunt Intesar would have recognized immediately — the quiet, deliberate choice to put people first.
She did that every day of her career. She and Ray never met, but I think they’d understand each other.
Day 3 — Time, Which Flies
My friend Damian and I have been friends since high school. We became close in college, drifted the way people do, and then COVID brought us back together in a way that changed everything. I don’t say this lightly: a lot of the good things that have come into my life over the past few years trace back to that reconnection.
He brought his son Eamonn to see Kent State this week. Eamonn is starting here in the fall.
I took that kid’s baby pictures.
There’s no clean way to describe what it feels like to stand in a hallway you walk every day and watch someone you love step into the next chapter of his life. The black and white portraits I made of the two of them that day — laughing, serious, caught somewhere in between — felt like the right format for a story about time. All the contrast, none of the noise.
Aunt Intesar held onto moments like that. She saw people — really saw them — in a way I’m still learning to do.
Day 4 — Learning to Move Again
I had been at my desk for what felt like weeks. My colleague Mike Rich finally got me outside for a walk across campus during a foggy, almost-warm morning that felt like a rumor of spring.
A Canada goose launched itself off the water in front of us — wings full, no hesitation, water flying in every direction.
I keep thinking about that. About what it looks like to just go. To stop sitting still with the hard things and let yourself move again.
Grief has a way of nailing your feet to the floor. But Aunt Intesar never stayed still. She was always moving toward someone who needed her. Maybe the lesson she keeps teaching me is that moving again isn’t betrayal. It’s the point.
Day 5 — Found
Later on that same walk, we came across a pair of glasses hanging on a branch.
No note. No owner in sight. Just glasses, covered in fog droplets, suspended over a bare branch that was just barely beginning to think about spring.
I keep thinking about the person who lost them. Did they even notice they were gone? Are they stumbling around somewhere, the world gone soft and blurry, wondering where they left them?
Grief is a little like that. Something goes missing and suddenly the whole world loses its sharpness. You keep reaching for something that isn’t there anymore, trying to see clearly without the thing that helped you see.
Aunt Intesar was like that for so many people. The one who helped things make sense. And now we’re all just wandering around in the fog a little, learning a new kind of vision.
I’m trying to find beauty in the blur. Some days that’s easier than others.
Day 6 — His Room, His Vision
I gave my son total control of his bedroom redesign. His walls, his layout, his aesthetic — entirely his call.
He built something remarkable.
A “LIVE MUSIC” neon sign glowing red above a multi-screen command station with LEDs dialed in just right. Every device placed with intention. This isn’t a kid’s room — it’s a space. One that says exactly who he is without him having to say a word.
He’s almost at middle school, and I keep blinking and finding someone sharper and more himself on the other side. Sweet and sensitive in all the ways that matter. The kind of kid who tries harder when something doesn’t go his way the first time.
Aunt Intesar would have pulled up a chair and asked him to show her everything. That was her gift — she made people feel like what they loved was worth loving.
I am so grateful to be his dad.
Day 7 — The Rainbow in the Parking Lot
I almost walked right past it.
An oil slick in an ordinary parking lot, spinning itself into a full spectrum of color. No rain needed. No special conditions. Just light hitting something mundane at exactly the right angle, and suddenly — a rainbow.
I’ve been paying more attention to things like this lately. The beauty that doesn’t announce itself. The color hiding in the mess. I think grief does that — it slows you down just enough to notice what you used to rush past.
Aunt Intesar had that quality naturally. She didn’t need a reason to stop and appreciate something. She just did.
I’m learning to look down more often. There are rainbows in the most unlikely places. You just have to be willing to stand still for a moment.
Day 8 — The Scientists and an Old Friend
I spent the day judging the Hathaway Brown School Poster Session — my second year doing it, somehow. Almost certainly the only non-scientist or engineer in the room. I spent three evenings beforehand genuinely studying the four presentations I’d been assigned, because I did not want to look incompetent, and more importantly, because I really wanted to give these students something useful.
What I could speak to: communication. How you make someone who doesn’t share your expertise care about what you discovered. How you stand in front of your work and make it land.
They were extraordinary. Sharp and passionate and prepared in ways that made me feel genuinely hopeful about what’s coming.
And then, in the middle of all of it, I looked up and saw Herb Schilling — computer scientist, lead of the Graphics and Visualization Lab at NASA Glenn, and one of my favorite people from my time there. The world got a little smaller and a lot warmer all at once.
That’s the thing about gratitude, I’m learning. It’s not just about the big moments. It’s about looking up and recognizing the good that’s already in the room.
What Week One Taught Me
I went into this challenge thinking it would be about grief. And it is — every post is for Aunt Intesar, and I feel her absence every single day.
But what surprised me is how much it’s also been about noticing. About paying attention to the people around me who are quietly choosing to be generous, kind, and present. Ray, giving his company to his employees. Damian, showing up for his kid the way good fathers do. My son, building something beautiful in his own corner of the world. Students who stayed up late to do their best work. A friend from a chapter of my life I still carry with me.
Aunt Intesar spent her whole career doing what all of them are doing. Showing up. Choosing people. Staying present.
I’m 8 days in. 22 to go.
If you’d like to support the American Cancer Society in her memory, the link is below. Every dollar helps. Every share helps.
Thank you for being here. 💛
Rami Daud is a photographer at Kent State University’s University Communications & Marketing department. This post is part of a 30-day photo challenge benefiting the American Cancer Society, in memory of Intesar Taye.