Chona Kasinger

It’s always a tremendous honor to be included in @american_photography_winners 💕 So grateful for the long time collaboration @seejane_ at @seattlemet . Convincing a magazine and congresswoman to do a shoot at my house still feels like a crowning achievement? Congrats to all and thank you to the jury ✨

Last year, I pitched and photographed what became a 10-page feature in the Spring issue of @seattlemet . Every May, more than 500 yards, front paths, and driveways across West Seattle open for business all at once. It feels like the entire neighborhood has spilled its guts onto the lawn. Writer Zoe Sayler and I set out to explore and found much more than we bargained for: underground lairs, hidden treasure, and stories of life coming full circle through shared video game consoles. Equal parts love letter to my neighborhood of three years and morbid curiosity, this story feels like my absolute sweet spot as a photographer. A reminder to fellow photographers to never stop pitching. Big thanks to @seejane_ for trusting the pitch and for the beautiful design   Almost all of this was shot on my #gfx50r, the perfect camera for approaching a slow, methodical story like this one 📸

For @nytimes : She Didn’t Want to Live With Advanced Dementia. So Why Was She Being Kept Alive? I hope you can spend some time with @kateraphaelreports ’s complex and thoughtful reporting on the incredibly difficult end of life situation the Lawson family found themselves in last year— a story all too common. Thank you to @tiffanie.graham for the trust, direction and edit 🤍

For @nytimes 🗞️ 5 lessons from readers in the trenches of elder care. Jenn Adrien was shocked when her parents left their Tacoma community in their 60s to relocate to a large home in rural Illinois — a longtime dream of her mother’s. “It was really neat to see my parents flourish in retirement, but then the reality set in: what it’s like to care for a 4,000-square-foot home as just two people, and what it means to live in a rural area.” Learning from her parents’ experience, she and her husband have decided to modify their current Tacoma home to better accommodate their own future accessibility needs. Thanks for the call @dmrtoast !

Spent 60 hours in San Francisco over the weekend and had the opportunity to tour @internetarchive , a wondrous digital repository in a former church. Thank you to Jason Scott for the impromptu tour and fun time. Did you know the entire internet could fit on a 2 terabyte drive in 1997? Last couple frames are of Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine with his cool jacket ✨

For @themargin_us : Too much money to qualify for federal aid. Not enough to fix a broken furnace. Lisa Moorer is one of many falling through the cracks of America’s energy system. Lisa spent the winter layering sweaters and running her oven as a heater — all because her income was just above the federal poverty line. Writer Amal Ahmed investigates the state program trying to help. We’ll be doing a talk on April 23 (info on final slide) if you’d like to learn more!

I spent a couple of hours with @balourdetquartet , a renowned classical quartet currently in residence with @seattlechambermusic , on a rainy weekday a few months back for @seattlemet . While in Seattle, the group is staying at a retirement facility, filling their days with open performances, lectures, and concerts across a range of community spaces — including Memory Hub, a “dementia-friendly community” through the University of Washington’s Memory and Brain Wellness Center. It was truly touching to witness how visibly moved the audience was by the quartet’s performance. A reminder that music really is one of the universal love languages 🎻✨

For @thetimes 💻 I met with Microsoft veteran Babith Bhoopalan and his 16 year old daughter Thea at home for a story on something I think a lot of people are thinking about right now: “AI proof careers”. Initially interested in a career in finance, Thea has decided to pursue foreign relations after an epiphany that diplomacy cannot be outsourced to robots. Among some of the other most “AI resistant jobs”? Mental health therapist, firefighter, surgeon, diplomat and plumber.

For @fortunemag 📱 In a landmark social media addiction case, Meta and YouTube were recently found complicit in harming young users through features that are addictive and detrimental to mental health. Features such as infinite scroll, algorithmic recommendations, and beauty filters have all been linked to increased anxiety and depression. I met with Sarah Hill, a patient at ReStart, one of the nation’s few residential treatment programs for digital overuse that treats tech addiction as a danger on the scale of alcohol or drug addiction. At age six, Sarah Hill was handed her first iPad by her parents, which she used to play games like Angry Birds and Minecraft whenever she was bored. By age 21, the Alabama native had fallen so deep into virtual reality experiences and playing video games that she’d stopped seeing friends, showering, and brushing her teeth. “If you compare video game and tech addiction to drugs,” she says, “VR is the meth of drugs.” Sarah hopes to resume her studies and pursue a career in 3d animation when she returns home. Thank you to @mj_diehl for the call, trust and support ✨

Happy first day of spring! We did it! I am thrilled to share the spring cover and feature on a polarizing topic here in town— the weather ☔️⛈️⛅️⚡️I’m happy to say my compulsion to run for my camera every time I see a rainbow has paid off in dividends over the years. I took the cover photo after a shoot last spring in which the sky absolutely erupted on me, my assistant and five subjects in Woodinville (shout out @ramondompor for tagging along on that one). By the time we wrapped, the entire drive home looked like a vintage Microsoft screen saver 🌈 ✨ 🎨 @seejane_ ✍️ @aliwill12 @seattlemet Give me all your hot takes on Seattle weather in the comments, I’ll go first: I love umbrellas 🌂 ✨

My winter 2026 newsletter is live! New work, new side quests and connecting to nature during the coldest part of the year ❄️ Link to my newsletter archives in bio 🔗

For @businessinsider : It’s never been easier to start a side hustle. That’s the good news— and the bad news. For Kathleen Elkins’s story on the future of capitalism, I met with William Butterton, a full time engineer with multiple side hustles that include managing atm machines, flipping Pokémon cards and labubus, 3d printing and more. William’s philosophy is to start wide and then filter down once things start clicking. He aspires to run his own full time business, but is in no rush. I unlocked a core childhood memory of encountering the Pokémon glitch Missingno on my gameboy during this shoot 👾