Stories connect us

Let’s face it, most of us feel disconnected from each other and lonely. Times have changed, and our tight-knit groups of friends, where we really knew each other, have turned into online personas. Some of us ’90s kids are now parents, aunts, uncles, and business owners trying to navigate the 2020s, where tech companies, AI, and algorithms want every little ounce of our attention to feed us advertisements for the next big “Thneed” [Lorax reference if you get it].

As a kid growing up in Texas in the ’90s, if I wanted to hang out with a friend, I would hop on my bike, ride down the street, and knock on their door to see if they were home. Summers were spent running around the neighborhood with other kids on the block. I’m a millennial who still remembers our short life before dial-up internet and those AOL CDs showing up in the mail. Bike rides turned into AIM messages (username: matt82597), friendships turned into MySpace top fives, then Facebook feeds, and I still remember my wife convincing me to download something called Instagram so we could share photos with our friends.

When I moved back to Texas in 2023, life here looked different. The communities I grew up in felt like they had disappeared. Back roads were replaced with new streets and highways. Small businesses were replaced by franchises, and modest neighborhoods and farms were replaced by shopping centers and developer communities.

I’ll write more about our journey of leaving Texas and coming back another day, but we chose the community of McKinney because it felt like the Texas we remembered. A central downtown where people gather, local taco shops just a bike ride away, and east-side neighborhoods that feel lived-in and full of history. But when we arrived, I realized I didn’t actually know my neighborhood or the people there. So I did what I always do. I picked up my camera and started meeting folks in my community and sharing their stories. Since then, we’ve been connecting people around town and bringing neighbors together.

That’s why we started McKinney Camera: to connect with our neighbors, do life together, and tell the stories happening right here in our community. We make films with the people in them, not just about them, capturing the moments that make our towns feel like home.

We’re community-supported and built from the ground up by folks right here at home. Your subscription keeps us focused on people, not corporations, and helps us invest our time, energy, and resources back into the community we live in.