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Breaking Into the Industry (And Other Misadventures)

These blogged musings are becoming more and more scarce these days. But not without very good reason. With as many strides as I have already been making to impact my industry of preference, what little ground I've managed to make, what goals and hurdles I've managed to clear... none have been enough. Inexplicably I have reached a point whereby I am not placated by any measure of success, only further motivated, with a vicious, violent thirst, for more. And this past Sunday fed that relentless drive a steak dinner with deep, dry red wine.

For the sake of context, a little back story is in order.

Since February I have been engaged in travel real estate photography jobs for an online listing service that has blown up tremendously in the past couple years. It is the first legitimate, contracted and paid photography "gig" I've ever had going for me, and to this day I continue doing shoots for the company. Early in April I was scheduled to do a shoot in Southeast Washington DC, the only of the weekend. While I had been very responsible and composed on days prior to shoots in the past, this particular weekend saw a lapse in my judgment and I drank just a bit too much alcohol the evening prior. Enough to the point that I did not only oversleep, but felt awful enough to call up the client for that day and request we reschedule (with an exceptionally large helping of apology). Unfortunately the client's own circumstances were such that rescheduling was very much impossible, thus if the shoot did not happen on that very day it could not happen at all. Understanding yet begrudged, I packed my gear, drank lots of water and made what has become something of a habitual trek down to the DC area.

I arrived at the client's rental space, requested "the tour" so I could plan my angles and exposures for the shoot and dove right into the work. Maybe 20 minutes of effort total, move from room to room, corner to corner, capturing all the typical angles of interest. The client was wandering about the house amid my staggered photographing, but at one point stopped to ask me a battery of questions about when I had started working for the listing service and how long I had been photographing in general. Still in a partially hung-over daze, I rattled off sloppy but straightforward answers. She even asked about my camera, taken slightly aback by its diminutive size. I explained how I had used tradition DSLR cameras for years prior to drinking the mirrorless system camera Kool-Aid, and was so spoiled by the convenience of size while maintaining top image quality that I would never go back. At this point, after a pause in the conversation while I was snapping her living room, she mentioned that she worked for a public relations firm in the city and that they were occasionally looking to hire freelance photographers to complete jobs for their art directors. Still in a zombie haze, I fumbled for my wallet and handed off a business card, letting some of my idiocy show through with an unashamed comment, "The two things I do well, drink and take pictures". If I recall correctly she was right on board with me concerning drinking habits. A quick discussion about the next phase of her property shoot and I was off, not thinking much about the transpired conversation at all.

Then a week later an e-mail shows up in my inbox from that very client, only it wasn't her personal e-mail address like I had before, but a corporate e-mail. Her PR firm had great interest in hiring my full-day services for a photo shoot necessary in to complete a high-profile ad campaign for a city sponsored program. They requested my day rate and contract. No interest whatsoever in finding competing rates from other photographers. They wanted me, no question.

At first I was still from shock. Then I proceeded to let my internal freak-out erupt.

This was it, my first freelance commercial photo shoot, the very job in the very industry that I have always wanted. Professional shooting with studio equipment for commercial clients to produce giant ads that would be plastered over subways and bus vinyl. A job in what is easily the hardest photography industry to break into. And who would have thought that my ticket in, the critical networking contact, was a woman I had met weeks ago on a photo shoot I nearly cancelled but completed anyway while brutally hung over. Amazing.

The weeks leading up to the shoot were something a clusterfuck of equipment acquisition. Studio equipment was an absolute necessity for this client, and I had none at my disposal to speak of. Scrambling funds together, I ordered what I thought would be the crucial gear set for the client. Unfortunately, only the week of the shoot did I discover a different few pieces were needed. God bless 1-day shipping. But otherwise, I was set. Set and gung-ho. Not in the typical sense of excitement, the sloppy, giddy, so-overblown-with-energy-that-mistakes-are-inevitable way. Rather a very cool, collected, goddamn-it's-about-time-I-take-this-step way. Even before beginning, I already felt accomplished.

Without going into details, the shoot itself went without a hitch. Barring a model that never showed (which put the casting director in a quiet panic), every session throughout the day went incredibly well. I stayed at the hip of the art director, sharing my captures with him in every scenario to ensure what I was capturing matched with his vision (an effort I suspect he was very appreciative of). Despite being the most expensive aspect of the shoot up front, the studio portrait portion came and went in the span of perhaps 15 minutes. A full 30 minutes ahead of schedule, the shoot was completed. I celebrated with my partner with Coronas and spicy hot TexMex. It was a fantastic day.

This entire week I've felt a critical change in how I approach photography from a business standpoint. Even with the introduction of paid real estate shooting months earlier, the tracking of payment and expenses has largely been an afterthought of mine. Now, however, with this most recent shoot hopefully being the first of many to come, my approach is absolutely required to be more proactive.

Going back to the first travel property shoots in February, I've logged every bit of mileage, comped and uncomped, tolls, expenses for studio equipment, anything and everything that a formalized, incorporated business would be required to track. While I am not yet a legally established small business entity, I feel it will not be long now before that approach becomes the next logical step for me to take. Though still diminutive by comparison to the income of my established 9-to-5, the rate of growth I am suddenly experiencing with my photographic pursuits leads me to believe they will inevitably balance out, and although the pursuit of one is certainly harder than the other, eventually they will come to compete. The question is how long do I get to enjoy this balance before the competition begins? I only have so much free time in which to accommodate photo shoots so long as I work a structured Monday through Friday schedule and with no time to mentally defragment and relax, I run the risk of putting both pursuits in jeopardy.

Next week I am taking a trip to Pittsburgh. Originally it was strictly intended as a personal vacation, a weekend to abandon all work and responsibility, to retreat for a few days into a crowd in which rules and social etiquette are afterthoughts, thus making it socially acceptable to behave like a fool (and even garner praise for it). In direct defiance of my own intentions, however, I've been hired by someone who will be in Pittsburgh at the same time for my photography services, thus officially making this Steel City pilgrimage an unexpected business trip. While I don't expect the shoot to be particularly difficult, I do hope it doesn't leave me in a mindset whereby I cannot relax even while on vacation.

It's a bit terrifying when you lose the ability to be satisfied with doing nothing.

Anniversary of a Photographic Blackout

I went digging through my archive of photographs to see just what I had been photographing at this time last year. It's my time-to-time tactic for making myself feel better about the stage of photographic evolution I may be desensitized to at any given point. Last night was a particularly low night for me, with an interest in pursuing the muse ultimately defeated by an inexplicable inability to do so, a comedy of self-inflicted errors leaving my spirit deflated. So I sought the crop, the product of my photographic musings in May last year.

My ailing short-term memory seems to be evolving into a long-term memory problem - in May of last year I took no photos. I had no adventures. I had no camera. In May of last year I was recouping from my dance with the Reaper.

Wild to try and think back to that time, really. Much as I dwelt on a split sense of identity at the time, I no longer seem to feel that way today. If anything, the person, the personality and outlook I'd adopted during recovery was the John 2.0 he would always ramble about. Who I am now feels seamlessly connected to the person before the accident, but with a greater sense of self and profound understanding of the lessons to have been learned from the experience. My identity is whole again. Thus it is strange to think that I could have ever endured a period of doubt, that such a disconnect ever existed.

In any case, I wouldn't take a photo again until June 11th of 2011. I was sitting at the coffee house with the son of the woman whose car I was in when the accident occurred. Good kid, helped me keep tabs on his mother's progress through recovery as her's was a much longer process than mine. I had just acquired the funds to purchase a replacement camera, which I was very eager to do. All I could think about was rebuilding the camera system I had lost, putting together a similarly competent system and running into the photographic fray once again. Unfortunately, all I had enough for was a premium compact, the Olympus XZ-1, which I still use and love today, but was not nearly the kind of system I had lost in the accident (a compact is hardly something one can refer to as a system). I didn't care, though. All I wanted to do was take pictures again and I didn't care what the limitations would be. I needed to be able to photograph again.

We sat up at Starbucks, drank coffee and mused about how all our worlds were rocked. He nearly lost his mother (and at the time still stood the chance of losing her), I nearly lost my life, the legal repercussions of the event were still nebulous and worrisome, all we could do to keep our minds out of the sea of confusion was to talk out our stresses over coffee. He didn't mind me photographing him. Being a musician and therefore artistic type himself, he understood the swell of pain involved when a muse is untapped for so long. And frankly, the photos were terrible - I was learning a new camera after over a month of never touching one and being dry as can be on the concept of composition and processing. I was learning how to do everything from scrap puzzle pieces littering the ground, some of which were so malformed and destroyed they didn't even fit anymore. Amazing to think that I've managed to put the picture back together at all, let alone so well that I've monetized the process with a talent that others recognize enough to pay money to utilize.

I have a photograph of myself after getting home from the hospital. My face was still pretty discolored with bruising, scars bright and glaring against my skin. I looked like I hadn't showered in days (which, come to think of it, I hadn't). A sad, broken person, with a sad, broken history. One year later, on the very date of my demise, this self-portrait replaces the image of that broken person. And even though this whole nostalgic ramble was spurred because of a tragic dry spell in the pursuit of the next strong image, it's hard to be so pessimistic when the pace and progress of the past year is taken into consideration. Bored and frustrated as I may be, I'm still smiling.

I Feel Another Transition Coming On

My life really does feel like it has endured nothing but a steady stream of really positive transitions in these opening 4 months of this new year. Call it paranoia, but I do hope this rushing sweep of uplifting change and accompanying optimism isn't precipitating a pending future tragedy. For a change, I'd like to think I've already endured more than my fair share of personal tragedy. Not just the car accident that should have ended my stream of consciousness, but the year preceding which was effectively a long-term state of mind so unbearable as to make the concept of premature death not just palatable, but appetizing. It's good to be done with self-imposed bad vibes.

So much of the latter half of 2011 was spent re-evaluating my significance, my reason for being. Much time was spent mentally fixated on the perplexing circumstances of my continued survival, a constant process of rationalization. My perception of who I was split, the original variant of my concept of self left dead on the roadside. The person that remained was a shambled collection of the broken pieces from that shattered identity, a piecemeal sense of self not cohesively arranged into anything recognizable as the defined man preceding it. I was someone new, someone different, and despite all the years spent defining the person I was (leading to the tragic result that was a self-sabotaging 24 year old) I needed to slow down, take my time, erase what was written and start fresh, ink in what worked and erase the sloppier parts of the draft. Like traveling back in time to correct mistakes you know you'd make (only without that silly Hollywood subplot of every change inevitably bringing a negative consequence).

Most of 2011 felt like lost time, a period of recovery where progress that could've been made wasn't. Once upon a time that thought left me feeling cheated, but now I appreciate the hiatus from rapid progress as it gave me the time I needed to really think critically on what I wanted to achieve, which pursuits were the most fulfilling, what I wanted out of life instead of what I was being given. That period of introspective brainstorming shows today. Without it, I wouldn't have ever developed the brand that I am now recognized by. I wouldn't have met the people I've developed an affinity for shooting with. I wouldn't have branched off into actual studio work, been contracted to shoot real estate for a legitimate, well established company, been published and re-published in a strong, ongoing business relationship with a foreign publishing firm. I wouldn't have realized the dream of becoming an established, working photographer. And that really is the important part... if not for the wild way in which events unfolded, I never would have ascended from the tragic dreamer to the man living the dream. From simply quixotic to self-actualized.

It's a good feeling, and life has become an optimistic affair. And while it is natural to become acclimated to the state of being after a goal has been achieved and once again yearn for the next goal, the next journey, I am supremely contented with the coasting ride. However, I have a swelling sense that the changes are not done coming, that in spite of the grand positive influx of happy coincidence and boons to my future, there are still other subtle, unexpected changes set to settle in my lap. Regardless of need or desire. Independent of anticipation. So long as I continue making progress in solidifying my foundation as "Photographer".

Life has treated me well. And I am absolutely thankful.

Uprooting Syndrome

Life in general has been on an all too lasting holding pattern as of late. Last month I signed the lease to a new apartment, and while items were trickling over into the new space the entire time, it has been in the past week that the vast majority of major item moves have taken place. As it stands, the new apartment is more or less together with nearly all the "keepers" from the old space, but with that said, the old space still needs to be emptied. As nice and obvious an "upgrade" as the new apartment is, the transition is bittersweet - after 4 years in the former residence, memories, habits, a solid history had formed in and around it, the likes of which it will naturally take some time to form in the new apartment. Much as I love the new place, it just won't have that home feeling until I've been there long enough to built a new set of patterns, write a new history. Ah, the impact of sweeping transition.

The only photography I've managed to engage in during the past couple weeks has been some shooting in Baltimore, at the inlet of the Inner Harbor. Night shooting, the classic stuff I learned the art of photography on to begin with. Learning some niche issues that make the E-P3 a bit tricky to use when shooting at night, but learning it well enough. Still in love with the wildly punchy but somehow balanced colors it produces in i-Enhance mode. To remove one annoying little handicap to my post-process, I invested in a new monitor last night, a 23" LED with excellent tweak-ability and bundled calibration software, perfect for ensuring solid photo editing. It's nice to not be left squinting at the screen anymore to edit photos and be a slave to off-even zoom levels. It may not affect ultimate image quality, but it will certainly make the experience of post-processing less cumbersome and annoying on my end.

Another off-usual tidbit from last week, I visited a therapist for the first time in many years. At the encouragement of a friend (though, really, multiple friends), I sought professional counseling to get to the core of a multifaceted and deep seated disquieted demeanor I just can't quite seem to shake. I've been more and more prone, in recent years, to essentially consume stimulus much as one consumes media such as TV or movies, and much like those who watch too much TV or waste too much time watching movies or playing video games I've reached a point where no matter what my goal, the hobby in practice, whatever I may be working towards or in pursuit of, I am never satisfied by the ultimate outcome. Not disappointed at the end result, but disappointed that it is a completed goal. If not on a constant journey, a non-stop march to complete some objective, I quickly grow bored and stir crazy until the next goal is presented. Effectively, I am binging on work because I'm never content with the result no matter how positive. After my first session last week, it was suggested I read up on and engage in the practice of meditation to slowly bring myself to contentedness with doing nothing, and while I would like to try it the first step demands a location that is relaxing, sacred, generally non-stressful, and because I am in a new place that isn't even entirely together there is nowhere at home that qualifies.

Best I could think of was perhaps driving out to one of my abandoned sanctuaries and practicing meditation there, which I'm fairly confident would work, but that line of thinking brought me to a deeper point of understanding about how I work mentally. I haven't explored solo in quite some time, usually bringing along the safety net of a friend such as Kyle or with a trustworthy group. From a safety standpoint, such a practice is best, but I thought further about how I felt while exploring on my own, with no safety net. Mental wellness meditation involves a strong emphasis on body awareness, demanding central focus on breathing, where the body occupies the space around it, generally a sense of where you are, strictly locking the mind in the time frame of the present. While exploring in groups, my mind has always been muddied by the influence of those people, be it self-conscious thinking of their perceptions, the influence of their photographing approach on my own, any number of subtle, often overlooked ways in which we interact with each other simply by being in close proximity. Alone, however, there is no better way to describe the experience than the most firmly rooted in the present and the most keenly focused and aware of myself, my body, my presence. Concern for Facebook status updates, what I'm eating for dinner, how much gas I have left in the tank, what groceries I need, whether or not I cleaned the stove, none of it ever entered the picture during my solo explores of late 2010 and early 2011. Everything was strictly in the moment, and the only elements that mattered were what were directly available to the senses. In essence, those solo explores were like meditation all their own. I'm thinking perhaps I should engage in the practice of it again to reset that scope of clarity they provided before. If I can learn to function strictly in the moment during an explore, certainly I can bring it with me into my normal day-in, day-out.

Hopefully this weekend the apartment transition will be complete. Then, finally, I will be able to return to a more normal span of activities. My hands miss holding the camera.

Skylines and Mountainsides

On this day last week I was roadway bound for the region around Shenandoah Valley, specifically gunning for Skyline Drive. If you haven't heard of it, you should have. It's a very touristy locale, but still manages to offer the kinds of stunning vistas you'd think only hardened mountain climbers should ever get the opportunity to see. I'd been there once before in 2010 with a good friend who held similar interests in the photographic sense as myself. Our time there 2 years ago was the stuff of magic. While last week's excursion was certainly not nearly as long a trip, it was still a time of heavy introspection and abstract worldly appreciation. One of those rare opportunities to step back from the game our modern world has made of our day to day existence and contemplate the stuff of existentialism, the stuff that really matters.

Driving down last week proved to be one of those quirky little adventures all its own. The main point of amusement was a hiccup in our chosen GPS device. Utilizing my tablet for all directions and other such location-related needs, we (Kyle tagged along on this trip) managed to make it a majority of the way without a hitch until the signal the tablet received from the cell towers dropped to nil. Suddenly the satellite was grossly off our actual location, so turns, landmarks, roads, everything was askew just enough to throw us that critical little bit off course. Frustrated, a quick stop at a lovely little Italian eatery in the land of Middle-of-Nowhere was just the recharge needed, and with our bearings re-synched we managed to make it to the place we'd chosen to stay for the night. And oh what a place it was.

Two thousand feet up on the undeveloped side of the Pocosan Mountain, hidden like a treasure up nasty, aggressive gravel mountain roads, a local conservationist, naturalist, farmer and all around green thumb had set up a rather large yurt on one of the cliff sides of his 60 acre mountain top property and rented it out to those interested and willing to brave the trek to reach it. He happened to have it listed on the website of the company that contracted me to shoot their listed rental properties, and for the minimal fee he was charging for its use it would have been an insult to myself to not have taken up the offer. Kyle and I aimed to stay there just for the night, my intent being to photograph the mountainside views as tenaciously as possible, but with Kyle's influence the vacation quickly turned from self-prescribed work to an actual, legitimate instance of rest and relaxation. What with the host's home grown meals served to us in the evening and for breakfast the following morning, a hot tub with an amazing sunset view and amazing views in general, it was hard to want to do much else than sit, let stress dissolve and take in the unique sounds of such an isolated area. An actual vacation, fancy that.

The following morning we set off to wander the winding roads of Skyline Drive. Again, while my intent had been to stop and photograph the overlooks aggressively, that simply isn't what happened. We did stop to take in several overlooks, but most of my attention that day was directed to the simple pleasure of aggressive driving, tackling the limited roadways as hard and as fast as possible. I don't think I have ever smelled brakes cooking so repulsively. Each stop at an overlook, though providing an opportunity to take photographs, was ultimately more an opportunity to let my brakes cool off and just generally give the car a chance to breath after the demands I placed on it for miles and miles and miles. It was a fun time, regardless, and Kyle wasn't terrified at all sitting shotgun through my irresponsible maneuvering. Was rather nice to have someone riding passenger who at least understood the method behind the madness of some of the more aggressive handling techniques I employed. 67 miles and 40 minutes later, we were in Front Royal, and even though our adventure hadn't lasted too long, we were both oddly eager to get home.

Unfortunately, the haze over the Blue Ridge Mountains was still heavy. I had hoped the haze would be more subdued in the Spring (my trip in 2010 was in the Summer and haze was atrocious). Ultimately, this means a Fall trip will be required as I am determined to photograph multiple North American States in a single image, and the nearly 4000 foot peaks of some of the mountains of Blue Ridge are some of the only places such a task can be accomplished. Just a quirky personal goal. But I will most definitely be looking forward to staying in the yurt once again.

It's also becoming more and more of a priority to me to shoot such scenes in lower light, either at nightfall or twilight states. They just speak to me more when photographed at those times. Well lit scenes are just so bland anymore.

Tonight I will possibly be shooting with the crew of local urban exploration masters I linked up with in January, but all will largely depend on events at home - I am in the middle of moving into a new apartment and alas the air mattress I've been sleeping on for nearly a year decided to pop last night. Oh well... cest la vie.

Abandoning the Status Quo

It's been a long while since I've made a post on this forum. Peculiar, really - as much as I have done, as many things as I have accomplished in just the (nearly) 2 months since my last entry here, somehow I feel like I have accomplished remarkably little of note. Or perhaps that's simply a rise in my sense of personal doubt that anyone actually cares what I am doing (and let's face it, why should they)? Not sure... but looking back over the past two months... dear lord, my world has been shaken.

Let's start with the business aspect of photography (since I like to pretend this blog is somehow business related in any respect at all). Early in February (but after my last post, obviously) I received a message from a photography department liaison for a certain vacation/travel real estate rental service that has blown up to something quite big over the past few years. At the core, their business model is decidedly "European" - when people have guest spaces they aim to rent out to short term travelers who would rather opt into a private space than a hotel, this company handles the money between them as well as functions as a sort of background checking buffer to ensure hosts and guests are trustworthy individuals. A simple and rather novel approach to rental properties, streamlining the booking process and doing well to alleviate concerns one might have when allowing strangers into their home (and vice versa). While every listing tends to have at least some photos snapped by the property owners themselves, this company contracts freelance photographers in various areas and distributes locations in need of more professional presentation. Effectively real estate photography.

Anywho, this liaison approached me with a very direct offer - not verbatim, but in generally the same words, she proposed to me "You take such fantastic photographs of the interiors of these abandoned structures, how would you like to be paid to take photographs of some not so abandoned interiors?". Long story short, I most enthusiastically accepted the offer made - now I am officially employed as a photographer! To date I have conducted well over a dozen shoots, for which I have been compensated quite graciously. Finally, after years of persistence and missed chances, I am operating in an industry I actually reserve some strong passion for. Good times, for sure.

Partially related to my engagement in such a business form of photography, my editing methods have also undergone tremendous adjustment. The standard by which everyone in the industry swears as far as post-processing goes is Photoshop. Well, Photoshop or Lightroom. An Adobe product. The packaged RAW editors delivered with cameras very often fall to the wayside, neglected and unappreciated.

Following the standard, I utilized Photoshop to process the RAWs from my first photoshoot for the company that contracted me. And much to my alarm, my submissions were rejected for not conforming to a certain style and expectation of image fidelity I simply didn't know how to achieve with Adobe Camera RAW. I fooled with the RAW for hours in ACR and could never manage a clean looking image that would pass the review gate, and as such I feared my chance at continued employment with this company was in dire jeopardy. Desperate, I traveled off the beaten path - I couldn't return to reshoot the scene using JPG processing in-camera (as I suspected the i-Enhance color mode with my manual adjustments would have been the golden formula the company was looking for), so I installed the Olympus Viewer 2 software offered along with the purchase of the camera. I knew that RAW editor would effectively allow the application of color profiles offered in-camera, just with much more in-depth tweaking available. While worried the clarity of the image would not be up to par with the detail retained by ACR conversion, I dove in regardless, out of options and desperate to submit a product that would meet the company's approval.

Not even 20 minutes later I had a solid bank of 15 or so images I knew would pass through the acceptance gates with no problem. More importantly, the next few hours I spent experimenting, reprocessing images I'd shot months ago in RAW, because dear lord Viewer 2 managed to produce a kind of tonality and color fidelity I would never in my life ever learn to achieve in Adobe Camera RAW. And to this day, my post process has effectively abandoned Photoshop entirely - Viewer 2 is that good.

Before, my process never affected the RAW file in ACR that much before it was fully rendered and dumped into Photoshop for layered editing. As such, the color profile of each image was an identically bland natural tone that depended entirely upon heavy adjustment layers to manipulate into anything original or artistic in aesthetic. I'd doted before on Olympus' magnificent JPG engine in-camera, but never really came to the understanding that the same color fidelity could be achieved with its own RAW development software. My only exposure to manufacturer RAW development before Viewer 2 had been Nikon's NEX software, which (as any photographer will tell you) was an atrocious failure of function. That first impression left a stigma that made me afraid to travel outside of Adobe for imaging software. Just as Olympus has a monopoly on ingenious JPG rendering, they similarly have the monopoly on supremely functional and genuinely useful RAW development software packaged with their cameras. No need to spend $900 on the Adobe suite when the camera you already spent $900 on can render an image just as well, if not better, with less effort required on the end of the user.

It dumbfounds me that Olympus isn't higher up on the photography tool popularity charts. They are the only manufacturer I have maintained a system from that actually has the entire package together to maximize the capabilities of the end user of their equipment. Their systems are open and modular, with both in-house support and that of many third party manufacturers, their products come packaged with functional, competent software so the end user isn't required to look elsewhere for optimal image rendering capabilities, they even provide for offsite storage of image files and the bandwidth to carry the load of image sharing and distribution. The system couldn't be more complete, from both a software and hardware end. It doesn't just stop at the capabilities of the camera, it runs over into excellent customer support, quality warranties and product repair, community and open sharing of information between end users - I would call it the Apple of digital cameras, even though I bear a strong contempt for Apple (which isn't to say I respect the amazing product and user support they provide). Digital imaging is so inundated with obsession over the hardware capabilities of its tools, a shame more people don't take the time to step back, look at the greater picture. I'm certain, if they did, Olympus would never have suffered the scare of 3 years ago when they very nearly dipped into irrelevance to the market.

Aside from those two very landmark points... well, let's see... I'm sure I've been up to other things too. My protege, Kyle, and I spent one weekend more or less binging or urban explores. His presence during an explore is a welcome thing - he manages to challenge my usual hesitations and boundaries of risk in ways that encourage the will to conquer them, not the easiest balance of provocation and empathy to exercise. We also took a trip into the Shenandoah Valley region off Skyline Drive for some natural landscapes, but alas, the Blue Ridge Mountains lived up to their name even this early in the year. They definitely demand a Spring-centric shoot to avoid their usual mask of haze. My backlog of personal images has gotten rather tremendous, what with photos from working shoots often taking precedence. However, with my log of working photoshoots taking a bit of a needed lull, I hope to present more of my most recent material this week.

So much in so little time. And so strange that is seems like the complete opposite to me... I really should learn how to relax a bit more.