When this blog first was created, it was with the hopes of showing off the types of photographic journeys I was taking. I had the high hopes of sharing stories behind the scenes of what I was capturing on film.

The dream of sharing stories that moved people not just in photos but in print just slipped ever so gently by. Life got in the way. Before I knew it, I was more focused on balancing fatherhood and work instead of setting out to create this amazing blog.

When I decided to throw myself seriously into the blogging experience, I learned that I told stories in a very different way than the medium called for. Most bloggers use a friendly conversational tone with their readers. The ones I’ve read anyway. Short, sweet, lovely, cute posts.

I had to go about it differently of course. I like that meaty heavy dense long content type posts. Kind of like a draw to the days of my youth when reading a 300 page novel was an evening’s relaxation treat after doing my homework. I used to put away two such novels a week when homework was a bit slow.

Ah, the good old days.

Today, I can’t even read a six hundred word post a week, let alone finish a book in a month. Such is life. Full of twists and turns that often leads me to digress from the main topic at hand.

Photographic Tour

So, back on track we go. I have not given up on that dream actually. I am not certain of how I will pull that off, as my camera is resting way too much these past few years. What I do know is that I have a huge hard-drive filled with photos of my early day’s effort of understanding photography.

They’re not the best of the best. They’re not studio perfect. They’re not print worthy. Well, not all of them anyway. These were the days of cutting my teeth through trial and error. What I couldn’t afford to learn with a paid teacher, I learned through shooting over and over and over and over again.

I probably wore a few friendships thin by asking over and over to shoot the same thing. Ok, I wasn’t that huge a pests, but dangerously close. Some say too close.

Some felt this was going to be the break I needed to go to photography stardom… which never came. It was a ton of fun to learn along the way. I made some amazing friends through the use of that one lens. I moved the hobby from just a fancy activity to an income producing activity. Some years I was able to pay for the equipment through the gigs I did, other years I barely broke even. Some years, that is what kept the gas in the car and school loan payments paid.

Types of shots

The main bread and butter of my journey in photography was doing weddings for friends. I rarely ever thought of charging market rates, big mistake, but I had a steady supply of clients. That was until my friends all were married and that corner of the market dried up.

If only I had invested in some marketing skills to find new young couples in need of a photographer…

Maybe if I had accepted to make this a business back then, I would have had the means to weather out some of the bumps in the economic road of life. Maybe I could have built up to a studio and improved even more to be in the business. However, the young man I was then was afraid of selling out and sacrificing the art by asking for money. I now know that was total lunacy on my part.

There is no glory in starving for your art. There is honor is getting an honest pay for creating art

I have done baby presentations, graduations, engagements, baby showers, all the usual stuff that up and coming photographers do to get their name noticed.