A Conversation with Christ Troupis & Tea Party Bob
LISTEN HERE: IdahoRadio.com
After four decades of battling in courtrooms as a constitutional attorney, Christ Troupis found an unexpected calling that transformed his perspective on life. The former Idaho Attorney General candidate, known for his staunch conservative advocacy and high-profile legal challenges, discovered a profound new purpose behind the lens of a camera.
The path to this transformation reveals a man of deep convictions and complex personal choices. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Troupis faced a heart-wrenching decision when his daughter required vaccination for him to see his grandchild. Though opposed to the mandate, his love for family led him to get the first covid shot. “After that he stopped,” he reflected as his voice was carrying both conviction and the weight of navigating between principle and family bonds.
His passion for education reform emerged not just in legal challenges to Common Core, but through personal connection to innovative solutions. His nephew’s success transforming a Chicago charter school, where students reading at third-grade level achieved college acceptance within four years, exemplified Troupis’s belief in education’s power to change lives. His voice brightens noticeably when sharing this family story of educational transformation.
The intensity of his legal career peaked during the 2020 Wisconsin election challenges, where he worked alongside his brother in a high-stakes recount. He is now watching his brother face felony charges for those actions, Troupis’s voice carries both unwavering conviction about their work’s legitimacy and deep concern for justice. “My brother was the most respected attorney in the State of Wisconsin,” he notes with a mix of pride and pain, “and they’re trying to put him in jail for the rest of his life, for representing President Trump.”
Yet beneath this fighter’s exterior lay someone seeking deeper meaning. When retirement approached, Troupis’s brother offered pivotal advice: find something passionate, challenging, and impossible to complete in a year. This counsel, meant to ease the transition from law practice to retirement, led Troupis to purchase his first serious camera and explore the Boise greenbelt.
The transformation was profound. “I discovered a world that was right at my back door that I had never seen,” Troupis explains. Through his lens, he began noticing intricate details of nature that had always surrounded him but remained hidden during his years of legal practice. His observations of eagles, ospreys, and local wildlife opened a window to a different kind of existence – one marked by patience and presence rather than argumentation and deadlines.
Where his legal career demanded proving others wrong, photography taught Troupis a different truth: “Being right isn’t always right,” he reflects. “I don’t need to be right anymore.” This shift from adversarial thinking to appreciative observation fundamentally changed his interaction with the world. He now finds himself sitting for hours watching birds, experiencing how “your blood pressure goes down, your heart rate goes down… your mind is completely clear.”
Troupis shares his wildlife encounters through weekly emails to about 250 subscribers, each featuring a photograph paired with a story. These narratives, born from hours of patient wildlife observation, offer readers a brief escape from daily struggles. He notices people jogging past beautiful scenes, absorbed in their phones or music, missing the wonder around them. His mission became sharing these overlooked moments, leading to a wildlife book that has sold over a thousand copies.
The former attorney’s approach to photography transcends technical expertise. “You don’t have to be a professional,” he insists. “The camera allows me to be creative. I can’t paint, I can’t sculpt, but photography lets me capture moments others might never see.” As the new president of the Boise Camera Club, Troupis emphasizes that while others might be better photographers technically, his passion for sharing nature’s wonder drives his work.
Perhaps most poignantly, this second career has deepened Troupis’s spiritual connection. “Photography has made me appreciate the nearness of God so much more,” he reflects, “because I see what He’s created all around me in a very special way.” Where once he saw adversaries to be defeated in court, he now finds beauty to be shared and preserved through his lens.
This transition represents more than a career change – it exemplifies how embracing new perspectives can reveal previously unseen dimensions of life. From constitutional battles to capturing the subtle moments of wildlife, Troupis’s journey shows how life’s second chapters can open doors to unexpected peace and purpose. For those interested in hearing more about this remarkable journey, the full conversation with Christ Troupis is available on Idaho Pulse, where he discusses both his legal career and his evolution into wildlife photography in greater detail.
The conversation reveals a man who has found a way to channel his passion for justice and truth into capturing and sharing the beauty of the natural world, transforming from a warrior of the courtroom to a chronicler of creation’s quiet moments.
LISTEN HERE: IdahoRadio.com
