On a fall day in 1986, a boy leans over the edge of a bridge spanning Foster’s Creek in Babylon, Long Island, and gazes at the water below. The tidal creek is choked with peanut bunker and spearing, and along the banks, blue crabs and egrets have joined him to watch the procession. The longer the boy watches, the more he sees: hermit crabs and mummichogs bumping along the bottom, grass shrimp suspended in the flooded marsh, eddies winking in and out of existence on the surface. The water is alive, down to the smallest grain of sand.
This is Howie Guja, four years old and curious, and although he doesn’t realize it yet, a new obsession has just been born.
“I’ve always been drawn to water and the coast,” Howie told me. “My dad had the same obsession. I just can’t look away.”
For those who don’t know Howie Guja, he has been a welcome presence on Instagram, cutting through the white noise of ads and dating videos with snippets of his Northeast life that he captures through vibrant photography. His style utilizes color and familiar visual cues to paint an idyllic view of coastal life—ocean vistas, boats, weathered shingled houses, fish, and wildlife—and while the subject matter often repeats, it never feels tired or played out. Think Edward Hopper with an iPhone.
A resident of Bellport, New York, Howie’s day job is as a seller of historic homes on Long Island, a role that places him front and center within much of the subject matter he seeks out, but unsurprisingly, his background is in photography.
“I studied photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York,” Howie says, “but I never really thought about photography as a career.” After graduating, Howie entered the commercial photography world, working as a digital retoucher and eventually a digital imaging manager, but he knew how difficult it would be to earn a living through a creative outlet.
“There’s a conflicted aspect of doing something you love but stressing over how to make money doing it,” Howie says. “If you really need to make the income, then it kind of takes the fun out of it.”
Determined to find a different path, Howie landed a role as a Publishers Clearing House rep and had the unique experience of delivering novelty big checks across the country, a role he credits with rekindling the joy of taking photos for fun.
“I traveled the entire country each year, and got to see different things that I never thought I’d see. Landscapes and people, it really was an incredible job.”
Howie joined Instagram back in 2012, and at first saw social media as a way to escape the doldrums of everyday life. If nothing else, it was an easy way to express his creativity while connecting with friends, family, and even strangers, but Instagram never crossed his mind as a vehicle to show off or earn a living.
“There was a time a few years ago when Instagram started to send things to creators, whether it was gear or opportunities in branding, but I always wanted to prioritize my family and my career over trying to make this into a business.”
Once again, Howie’s clean-line approach to work and pleasure won out, and today, even with 50,000 followers, Howie approaches Instagram in a similar, carefree way, snapping moments that genuinely catch his eye rather than pandering to what the internet wants to see. This philosophy even extends into his chosen equipment, as Howie often prefers to use whatever he has in his pocket at the time when he sees something photo-worthy. In this case, his phone.
“Bob Brooks, one of my favorite professors at SVA, once said that the best camera out there is the one you have on you,” Howie remembers. “I still have some really nice cameras, Leicas, things like that, but whenever I am on a trip with my family or fishing and hunting with friends, I usually just have my phone. That is good enough for me.”
The only frustration that Howie has with social media is that he has too many photos to post, a natural result of living a life surrounded by beauty. While he has noodled with the idea of creating a book of photography or trying to build a true-blue gallery, Howie has no concrete plans and is content with using Instagram to capture the smaller snippets of life.
“I have had people approach me and offer to help get something like a photo book off the ground, which is great, because it’s something I couldn’t do on my own,” Howie told me. “I am always taking photos, and this is a passion project that I would like to do at some point, but right now, I don’t really have the time. Maybe someday.”
Regardless of Howie’s plans for a larger body of work, what was clear from our conversation is that Howie Guja lives his life in pursuit of compelling moments. Moments with his family and friends, moments on the water and in the woods, moments of career success. Still, he knows when to slow down and capture what is worth remembering, whether it’s a beautiful home, a boat rolling lazily in the swell of a harbor, or a school of fish beneath a bridge.
You can find more of Howie Guja’s photography on his Instagram, as well as his website.
