Welcome back for another installment of my monthly Behind the Camera series. With this one being on New Year’s Day, I would like to wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2025. I hope that everyone has had a great holiday season as well. Each year, I take this first post in the blog to look back over what has happened over the previous 12 months. It makes for a great reference for me as I go through the years while also giving everyone a chance to see some of the things that have happened that might not have made it into the other blog entries. If you want to take a minute and check out what I said about last year, you can find that entry here. If you want the cliffs notes on that year, I didn’t think that much had happened, but by the end of looking back it was a rather full year. This year has been kind of equally as blah in my quick recollection, and I have a feeling that by the end of this entry, you will share that same sentiment. It wasn’t for lack of trying, there were just a lot of things at play during 2024 which kind of put photography as a secondary concern, if I even thought about it at all.
Something that I do like to do each year is to get out on the first day and get that first trek in the bag. Hopefully as you are reading this, I am out with the camera in whatever weather conditions are prevailing at the moment. It is actually December 3rd as I am typing this portion, so I have no idea what kind of weather awaits in nearly a month’s time. Anyway, on the 1st of January in 2024, I went out to my favorite spot for rust hoping to get a photo or two to start the year off. What ended up happening was that I shot over 100 frames and came back with roughly 20 keepers from the day. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this was probably my most successful first trek of the year that I have ever seen. I was truly excited for what it indicated for the rest of 2024.
As part of the tradition, I wanted to share the first shot of the year here which happened to be of a Ford Customline Sedan tucked away in the woods on the edge of the property. I had been trying to get in a position to shoot this car for years, but the vegetation had been too thick for me to get to it. With everything fully dormant, I was finally able to sneak back there and get a few shots of the car. It is fitting that this one is in black and white because something that I decided on very late in the previous year was to spend a lot of effort working on my black and white photographs. I was going to seek them out and then try different types of processing to see what kinds of different looks I could arrive at with the photos.
If you have had a chance to look through the top 12 most significant images for 2024, you will likely see that I have largely accomplished that goal/resolution for myself as more than half of the list are images without color. It was something that I wanted to do during the year for no other reason than to teach myself other ways of seeing. I didn’t make a huge deal about it when I decided that was what I wanted to do, but I have mentioned it during the course of talking about the different treks that I have been on. The end result is that I feel much more confident about my ability to make quality black and white images. I have also learned when to apply that type of photography to simplify an image or to change where the viewer’s attention is. It has made me a much more well-rounded photographer which was not an intended goal, but one that I will gladly accept.
Something else that was new starting in January was a new idea of doing a tutorial series on YouTube. In an attempt to remain relevant in a time when content creation is king rather than substance, I felt that expanding into YouTube was the way to go. It was also something that Toni had been prodding me to do for years as I sit and watch YouTube videos several times a week. My plan was simple, I would publish a weekly video that talked about some aspect of Lightroom and the post processing stage of photography. There are tons of channels out there that talk about the new features, but very little current information can be found on starting out with Lightroom and what can be done with it. Since it was going to be weekly, and I wanted to hold myself to the fire with the project, I called it Tuesday’s Tips. It started out about like I would have suspected with some technical issues and it feeling a little forced for me. Over time, I worked out many of the issues and streamlined the process. By the time November rolled around, I had done everything from the introductory bits on Lightroom and then covered all the global options in detail. I finished it up with describing local edits and how to use masks. There were bonus weeks thrown in with other tips that I thought might be helpful as well.
I think that the venture was a success for what I intended it to be. It is a resource that I can reference whenever I need to explain a certain technique that I have used, or to help a mentorship client understand some of the basics before we start to really delve into the process. The channel didn’t get quite the traction that I had been hoping though, and I never really got the views or subscribers that I was wanting. After nearly a year of doing this weekly feature, I took a break from it in mid November. As I come up with different things in the future to talk about, I will go back to it, but I’m happy to leave it there for my purposes and for anyone that is interested in learning Lightroom at a more relaxed pace and on their own time.
As I’ve alluded to many times over the years, I am always looking for different ways of inspiring others through photography and sharing what I have learned over the years. An acquaintance of mine, who I know through photography, works at Wilkes Community College and does some part time continuing education photography classes for them. On one of her posts talking about an upcoming class I reached out to her offering to help with anything that I could. This turned into a conversation that ultimately ended up with me in the principal’s office….errrrr the director of continuing education, that is. We discussed my qualifications and what opportunities might be available for me. They were in need of some very specific types of instruction that I didn’t quite feel qualified to teach but offered my services on a number of other topics and techniques.
I left that meeting without any clear answers on what was to happen from it. The classes that I really wanted to teach were not ones that they had need for as they were already handled by other instructors. What they were wanting, came in areas that I wasn’t all that versed in, specifically wedding photography. Weeks went by and those turned into months. Eventually, I figured that if they needed me, they had my contact information. I was never really looking for a regular class to teach, more just looking to be a guest speaker/instructor when I could add something to the curriculum. I didn’t lose any sleep over this, and kept my focus on my own photography and where this business was going.
As I closed out the previous year’s review, I talked about how I was feeling about the business end of my photography and said something to the effect of the smart choice would be to shut it all down because as a business it had failed. I wasn’t prepared to do that and had decided that I was going to do some type of blending between the art and the business of photography, essentially making it a hybrid hobby with earning potential. I just didn’t know how that ratio was going to work out. Truthfully, I still don’t know as I am currently tweaking it. This was something that I thought about for a good bit throughout the year, but it was heavy on my brain in the opening months because I needed a plan of action if I was going to focus more on the business aspects.
I think that I decided without deciding that I was going to deemphasize the business end and try to make it more enjoyable for myself. I wasn’t going to stress over things like workshops and print sales. My motivation was no longer going to be the bottom line, which for a businessman, is precisely what you have to focus on. Instead, I wanted to focus more on the art and enjoying creating the photos. This really took a lot of stress off of my shoulders and allowed me to concentrate on the process of photography rather than the end result. It would be nice, however, if some of my passive incomes would pick up such as my B&H Photo and Amazon affiliate relationships.
I don’t think that I mentioned it in the last yearly review, but I had started talking with a model located in Charlotte, NC, late in the year. She was willing to do a trade shoot with me, routinely called a TFP or Trade For Photos where neither of us gets paid, but we work together to create something which benefits us both. With the new mindset of not being worried about getting paid for everything that I do; I was happy to look into building a set for this shoot as a learning experience. This happened gradually through the beginning of the year based on what Michelle (ig: @mi_jalapeno) was looking for with the photoshoot. I do remember at every step almost hoping that she would back out because I really wasn’t sure that I was up for this, and when I had first approached her, I was feeling very confident after a string of very successful portrait sessions during the Fall of 2023. During the winter months, communications seemed to drop off and I figured that there wasn’t going to be a shoot, but I still worked on building the set because I wanted to have the ability to use the different props for other sessions that might pop up.
By the end of Winter, my reduced stress level from not worrying about the business had spilled over to my creative side and I had started to wonder about what the point was behind photography. This is something that I have battled time and time again since beginning of my tenure as a photographer. I was still going out and creating increasingly better photographs, but it seemed that nobody really cared. I was getting tired of photographing the same types of things over and over and needed to shake things up a bit. One type of photography that I don’t get to do that often is coastal photography. Remembering how inspired Jekyll Island left me in 2023, I felt that a return trip to the coast might be in order.
Knowing that I needed to focus on my photography and not be distracted, I chose to go on my own and picked the Outer Banks as the location. I knew that if Toni had gone with me, I would have set the camera aside and done things with her because I wasn’t really convinced that the photography even mattered anymore. It was odd going out there for nearly a week without Toni, but the experience did me very good. Despite some less than ideal conditions through some of the days, I managed to come back with a large collection of keeper images which I am still very proud of to this date.
Some things that I learned from this trip were that I do really connect with decay subjects better than I do typical landscapes. I am also drawn to deeper colors and lower light than most photographers. More importantly, I decided that I really did enjoy the process of getting up and going out hunting photographs in all types of conditions. it was exhilarating and very rewarding. I really felt that this was going to springboard my photography through the rest of the year.
What I came to realize was actually happening was that the trip to the coast was kind of the agonal breathing of my creativity. I never really built onto the experience from the Outer Banks and the coming months would get harder and harder for me to create photographs. It seemed that even though I was thrilled with the photos that I came back with, there was just no reaction from them. In fact, I had a large print order to fill through Hampton House for a client of theirs at the coast and they wanted beach photos. I thought that this was my chance to get the brand new photos into circulation. I submitted a good number of those new images to the client. Most were rejected as they wanted brighter colors than what I had captured. Of course, this was in no way a negative reflection on the photos, the colors and overall look just didn’t fit into what they were after. Fortunately, I had plenty of older pieces that worked for what they were wanting. It did leave me feeling a bit down about my photography because I knew that I had substituted lower quality work which had been received more favorably.
I guess I was in a vulnerable state at this time and events like that kept me off balance. It was at this point that I really started to question whether or not I was getting any better, or if I had peaked some years ago and was living in a world of my own imagination. I was now dreading the shoot with Michelle if it ever came to fruition, and I was hoping that she would just never find time to drive the two hours out here for the session. I even questioned whether my normal landscape and decay photos had any merit, or if they were even worth looking at in this age of over-the-top digital processing and Artificial Intelligence creating photo realistic photos. I was in a bad way and didn’t even realize it.
One thing that I always look forward to, however, is my yearly Decay Workshops at Outlawed Restorations. I had my first workshop of 2024, scheduled in the beginning of April and had really been looking forward to it because I was focusing on teaching how to get the detail shots rather than the basic overall compositions that I usually focused on. It was a new twist to the workshop and I felt that it would bring lots of renewed interest. As things turned out, I only had two participants for this one which was kind of a letdown since I usually cap it at eight with the majority of those slots being filled. There have been two different workshops here that have sold out in the past, but this one barely even had enough interest to actually happen. I am fortunate that both of the participants came very willing to work and they made it a fantastic workshop even though I was feeling really down about it to begin with.
Knowing that two other photographers had benefitted from my time and attention made me feel very good about the day and sparked my creativity a bit. In fact, I took a little time to create my own photos when I was ready to release the participants to search out their own photos within the property towards the end of the day. I felt really good about the whole day, and we had a great video session a week later when we reviewed the photos that were shot. It seemed that I was back in a mental place to create once again. The problem was that I didn’t really have much time to be able to do much creating. I had another workshop scheduled for the end of the month, and I had also been asked to do a presentation for the NC Haiku Society out in Chapel Hill.
For this presentation, I had to update and rework my first ever presentation about self-awareness through photography. I had done the original one while I was still working as a police officer for a therapy group for victims of violence. There was a lot of updating that needed to be done in order to make it applicable to this group, and I only had a short time to put it all together. Of course, the naval gazing that went along with putting that presentation together had some unintended results to my own psyche. I started wondering if my photographs actually meant what I thought that they did and whether or not they served the purpose for giving my thoughts and emotions a place to live. The more I looked at things, the more I just saw photographs that really meant nothing to me. Of course, I then started to wonder if my photographs meant anything to anyone else, which started another spiral into depression.
I’ve talked a lot over the past year about my creative slump and the lack of motivation that I have had. I really think that this is explaining where it all came from in the first place. As I look back on it, things are starting to look very clear, and I can see all the ingredients that went into the perfect storm that led me to not care that much for photography. It was a constant reminder that my work was just not as good as I had thought it was, and it wasn’t as appealing to others as it once was. Did my photography actually matter, and did I actually matter? This was actually a topic of a Behind the Camera from a while back if you will remember. It was actually back in the middle of 2023 which indicates that this is an ongoing struggle that I have with my photography.
Fortunately, the presentation went off without a hitch. It was a great group of around 17 members if my count was right. I think that what I said was well received and I got a lot of really great questions that proved that folks were listening to what was being said. It was a little boost to my mental state, but it was short lived because what was going on in my head was starting to have a life of its own and I wasn’t going to be able to ignore it much longer.
Even though I was feeling very low about my photography, I had another workshop scheduled for the end of April that I needed to prepare for. This was a workshop that I had offered at least twice in the past with absolutely no interest. I’m not sure what prompted me to offer it again because you know what they say about insanity…doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. The truth was I really believed in this workshop as a concept and thought that it would benefit others. I decided to give it one last try and as luck would have it, I ended up with three participants for a Sunday morning stroll through North Wilkesboro. I had worked with each of the participants before, so I already knew the strengths and weaknesses they had. This allowed me a little more relaxation in the planning aspects of the day as well as moving through the different locations that we shot in.
The workshop went incredibly well, and I have already released a similar workshop for 2025 because of how well it went. We even had a very in-depth image review and critique the following week through a video chat that cemented that this was a very worthwhile workshop even for established photographers. I was feeling a little better about myself and what I had to give others after this workshop. That bit of uplifting happened at just the right time because the following month was going to be one where I didn’t need to doubt myself, as I had been doing.
While the early part of the year was focused on my typical photography and working on my black and white photos, May began a different type of experience. This was pretty much all about people photography which I had not done much of up until this point through the year. The first assignment was a return visit to a company in Charlotte who had hired me to do headshots the previous Fall. They had a bunch of new employees and needed to expand the headshot coverage to some of the other existing employees. Fortunately, I knew how this was going to go and recalled the setup that I had used the last time. This made packing a bit easier because I knew more about the shoot location. I did change up my key light modifier for something smaller with a different quality of light to make working with glasses easier, but the rest was pretty much exactly how I had done it previously.
The session went very quickly, and I was able to get the shoot done before lunch. That allowed me time to have the photos polished and ready for delivery at the end of the day. That kind of efficiency did give me some confidence that had been lacking for many months. I was determined to turn my attitude around and figured that maybe it was time to really focus more on the people photography. This was something that had a built in resolution of sorts while my normal photos were more open ended. What I mean is that when I photograph people, there is an end use that is already expected, and the client is already there. When I take a photo of a barn or an old car, I’m hoping that I will find a client that relates to the photo enough to purchase a print, or that I will find another end user for it. When I don’t, it is kind of like winding up the jack-in-a-box, but he doesn’t come popping out. Maybe after all these years, portrait work will be more rewarding for me than my landscapes and decay.
As it turned out, I had heard back from Michelle around the end of April, and we had finally arrived at a date for Memorial Day Weekend for her shoot. Well, I guess this is getting to be a real thing, good thing I had been working on building out the set through most of the winter. Having come off of a successful headshot session, I was feeling a little better about my photo skills with people but needed to get some more practice, especially in the studio. Fortunately, Toni was willing to help out and be the model while I tried to knock the cobwebs off of my studio workflow. I also needed to figure out some different lighting options than what I had used before. This gave me a chance to practice and get some really good photos of Toni. She stuck with me for a while if memory serves, while we tried a number of different things in front of the camera. She came up with some great ideas along the way which helped to get me in the frame of mind for staging a full shoot in the studio.
This is something that is very foreign to me coming from a type of photography where I shoot it as I find it and look for scenes that would make good photographs. When it comes to studio photos, none of that is a possibility. I am quite literally starting with an empty black frame. I have to place props, backgrounds, floors, and a subject into a cohesive combination and then add lights to allow those elements to expose on the camera. Every aspect of the shot is something that not only do I have control over, but is totally dependent on me as to how it all appears in the photos. This session with Toni gave me a lot of great insights into how I could build out a set which is something that I hadn’t done in quite some time by this point.
I had also been spending some time on a Facebook photographer’s group looking for opportunities to get some more practice in as a portrait photographer. One of the posts that I came across was from another photographer, Elizabeth Habenec, who owns and operates Serene Snaps. She was looking to get some new branding photos for her business and was offering a trade for other photographers. I didn’t need any photographs, but I did need the practice, so I reached out to her. Unlike most of those Facebook group posts that I comment on, she actually responded, and we started to talk. In no time at all, we had worked out that I would shoot her branding photos, and she would sign a model release so that I could use them for my own marketing. We picked Wiseman’s View in the Linville Gorge for the shoot because she tries to do her sessions in natural areas just like that. She is also based out of Asheville which made this a middle point for us. I knew from experience that there were several locations at that overlook which would work for portraits. It was another fold on creating a scene for a photograph that might not actually exist. While I was going to be using the surroundings as I found them, it was going to be up to me how to incorporate Elizabeth into those scenes. Again, it was just the practice that I needed at this stage of the year.
The shoot went very well and while it went a little longer than I wanted it to, everyone kept the energy up and the photos turned out really great. She was excited about them and thought that they satisfied her needs quite well. There was also a little bit mentoring going on as I photographed her doing her thing, or at least her appearing to be photographing another person. There were a couple of little pointers that I provided that she seemed really happy to learn. This made me feel quite good once again because I was not only providing a service to Elizabeth, but I was also sharing information that hopefully would benefit her own journey.
By the end of the month, it was time to finally do the session with Michelle after something like seven months of planning and waiting. I set the studio up two days ahead of time and tweaked things during those days so that I had two completely different sets ready to go. The entire time, I was still kind of hoping that it would fall through because she has shot with some amazing photographers in the past, and I really wasn’t sure that I could offer anything worthwhile for her portfolio. It was still a great opportunity for me to learn more about posing and expressions which was why I had wanted to do this shoot in the first place.
The session started a bit late, but she had let me know that she was running behind which I thought was very considerate and professional of her. She came ready to shoot with hair and makeup done, she just needed to get into the first outfit. Since I had everything set up including the lights which were dialed in, we were making images within the first 15 minutes or so. It was one of the more elaborate sets that I had ever created, which you can see here, and we shot with it for a bit over an hour. After we were pretty sure that we had everything that we needed from that set, we moved to the other side of the studio and while she changed into her thrift store find of a dress which you see above, I set the lights for the next portion of the shoot.
It was this second group of photos that I thought turned out even better than the first. I really liked the simplicity of it all after stressing over all the little elements with the other set. It was a more classic look and one that I felt worked very well in black and white. We stuck with this set for another hour and change and by the end of the time, I had something like 500 frames on the memory card. Of those, there were something like 75 keepers that I fully processed and sent to her. It was a full three days’ worth of editing and processing which absolutely exhausted me. On the other hand, what had been created during what was basically a week’s time was some of the best work in the studio that I have ever done. It was worth the exhaustion, but there was another price to pay.
I had been steadily shooting and editing through the entire month of May between Toni, Elizabeth, and Michelle. It was a pace that I just wasn’t used to and quite frankly I was ready to call it quits for a while and take a much needed break. From the outside, it looked like I just wasn’t active at all because there were no blog posts about these shoots, and not much to speak of here on the website short of a few photos being added to the portfolio albums in the portrait page.
The creative exhaustion fed into the general creative slump that I had already been in, which was just not a good combination. I was still having a problem getting motivated to do my landscape and decay work and now the thought of doing anything with the prost production that was required just really turned me off from even wanting to try. Sadly, it wasn’t a “get out computer-work free” card. My decision to take a break didn’t release me from being in front of the computer at all. I just so happened to be starting work on migrating the website with the help of my friend in Florida who actually built this website back in 2018. The plan was to move to another platform that would be easier to manage and maintain on my own which meant that I was going to build it from scratch myself.
This started off in the early part of May and I was going really well there for a while. I had the basic website built by the end of the month and only needed to figure out how to get the galleries incorporated. The galleries, or my portfolio, is what I believe is the backbone for the website and the whole reason for having a website. As of right now, I am still awaiting some kind of idea on how to best do that and am at the mercy of my friend because I can’t find any way of doing it on my own. Web building is not my strong suit, although I did quite well for myself altering blogging platforms into websites back in my AOL days.
June brought with it some very interesting developments in addition to the work on the new website architecture. After first talking with a client in East Bend, NC, back in November of 2023, it was looking like we were finally going to get together to get a photo shoot done with his two classic Chevy’s. I ended up in contact with the owner through Dean at Outlawed Restorations where I do most of my rust photography. He also happens to do full restorations and had completely rebuilt the ’57 Chevy as well as all the freshening of the truck which had just recently been completed. I remember seeing the truck in the shop at least once during my visits there.
This shoot was something different for me because I don’t usually photograph vehicles in this kind of condition which is why I had gone out earlier in the year and shot my Miata just to familiarize myself with the pitfalls of capturing highly reflective paint. With the client’s schedule, it was kind of hard to pin down a day that would work for him, but we managed to land on one that worked between other obligations. However, the weather was not ideal with mostly sunny skies, and it was brutally hot as well. I had been wanting to get these vehicles shot in the Spring, but that just didn’t happen. The shoot took right around two hours, and I worked four different locations within the property with the two vehicles capturing some 30 images for him to choose from after a full two days of editing and processing.
Now that I had things kind of under control with all the scheduled shoots out of the way, I started to feel a bit more creative once again. I started wanting to go out on treks, and even had a short day of shooting in Charleston, SC when Toni and I went down there for a few days for a vacation. Things were really looking up at this point. Towards the end of the month, I was back to wanting to go out and drive around looking for decay subjects to shoot which was a great sign. While having a lot of fun photographing a trio of Triumphs in Yadkin County, I started to get word that there were some issues developing between our two daughters who were living in our old house. This ramped up quickly and before I was done with the shoot, it was looking like the decision was going to be to sell the house and get their own places to live. As the kids say…that escalated quickly.
Just like that, my plate was full once again and my mind was off of photography and very much focused on selling one house and helping to look for another one.
The following month of July was a very busy one and quite hectic with all the house drama. There was not much that was going on with my photography and quite frankly, I was firmly back in my doldrums which I had just started to come out of. During all of the preparations for a move coming up and trying to find a destination for that move, I was contacted by the CNPA in Charlotte who wanted me to do a presentation for the club. They weren’t sure what they wanted me to talk about so I went through some suggestions that I thought would appeal to the club. We ended up deciding on a presentation on standing out in the crowd which was well suited for a club of landscape photographers.
Of course, the timing for this request was not great because of what was going on with the family and the fact that I was feeling beat down again with photography. I was given a couple of potential dates with the first one less than a month away. The presentation that I had suggested wasn’t one that I had in my collection, but I knew that there was one that I could modify and update for the new slant on the topic. I opted for the first slot because I just didn’t know how things would be going much beyond that and didn’t want to run into a scheduling problem with any potential moves.
The rest of July was spent at the computer putting the presentation together and trying to get into a place where I could deliver the presentation in a convincing way. Truthfully, I was feeling like my photography was doing anything but standing out. The presentation came together quickly though, and I felt like it had good content. I just had to practice it and get to a point that it all seemed to have the right positive energy.
While not much really happened in July in regard to photography, there was a lot going on with the move. Sierra had found a house that she wanted and we were in the process of getting her moved by the end of the month. This prompted many trips back and forth to Winston with the 4Runner to help get her moved and on one particularly hot day while on the way back home, the 4Runner did what no other vehicle I’ve ever owned has done. It left Toni and me stranded on the side of the highway as the serpentine belt broke. Mind you, I had just replaced the original belt at 80K miles about ten months previous. With about 10K miles on the brand new Toyota belt, it disintegrated while passing a semi truck forcing me to pull off the road. This became a whole thing, and fortunately, Dean at Outlawed Restorations was happy to let me tow the truck to his shop because it was the only thing within the radius of our towing coverage through insurance. Sierra’s boyfriend, AJ, came to pick us up and take us home which was greatly appreciated. The following day I came back out with Toni and replaced the belt with a new one and found some damage to a large wire harness caused by the belt fragments slapping on the driver’s side. This was patched back together, but the questions that were left about the reliability of the truck were too much for me and I started to look for a replacement. Again, something else that pulled me away from concentrating on photography.
The presentation went off very well in August and I did it virtually since I wasn’t quite sure about the 4Runner getting me there and back. I really prefer interacting with the audience in person though, so I just wasn’t as excited about this presentation as I wanted to be. It is hard to tell how many were in the group because there was an in-person component as well as a virtual one with other members joining in through the Zoom link. I would say that there were probably 15-20 in attendance which is a good sized crowd for a photography club meeting.
A few days before the presentation, I did get to see the end result from a project that I had been a part of for something like three years by this point. I have mentioned a few times here and there about a book including the works of different Ashe County Photographers and actually talked about how I got started with it in the 2021 Yearly Review. From the beginning, I wasn’t sure if it was actually going to happen, or if I was going to even be selected to be included in the book. There were delays along the way and lots of little bits of news that made me wonder if this dream was ever going to happen. It was around the beginning of August that the writers were finally going to have the official book release at the Catchlight Gallery in West Jefferson. It was actually going to happen! After having looked forward to this for years at this point, I made it a point to scoot out there when they were ready for folks to come and get their books signed. I picked up my copy, got it signed, and talked with a couple of folks there. As it was getting crowded in the gallery, I made my exit and went home to check the book out in detail.
Since I talked in great length about the book as a whole and my portion of it in the video above, I won’t rehash it here. I would like to mention that it is available for purchase, and you can get it through Amazon if you like. Remember, if you use that link and purchase at the time of using that link, I get a few pennies from the sale while it doesn’t affect your purchase price at all. None of the photographers who appear in this book were paid for their photos, but did receive a complimentary copy which is how it should be for a project like this. By purchasing this book through that link, you are not only supporting the writers of the book, but also in a small way my own photography, as well as the other photographer’s who appear in it.
In the second week of August, things were starting to calm down for me. Sierra was finally moved into her house, I had a new Nissan Frontier on order through the dealership, and all my commitments were pretty much taken care of. Feeling like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, I decided to grab the camera and go out for a bit of landscape photography to just allow myself the calmness of being in nature. I chose Stone Mountain because it was close, and I haven’t been there much recently. It felt odd to be going hiking with the camera again after so long doing other things. The conditions weren’t great, but I was enjoying the experience and the quiet.
Of course, like has happened every other time I have started to get in the groove, there was something that presented an interruption to that experience. I will say that this time, it was something positive at least. Surprisingly, I got a phone call from the dealership saying that the truck had landed at the dealership overnight, and they were just checking it in. It was actually at least a week earlier than expected, and I had been expecting to get a call when it had shipped from the factory. Apparently, Nissan slipped this one in under the radar. This was on a Friday, and I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get things in place to pick the truck up just yet, so I asked to take delivery on Saturday morning. That worked out, and I forced myself to continue what I had started with the trek. Of course, my mind wasn’t fully there because I was thinking about what I still had to do in order to take delivery of the truck. I had fully been planning on some notice that the truck was enroute which would give me a week or more to get appointments set and some major parts ordered. I had to do all of that during the afternoon once I got home from Stone Mountain. There would have been no time had I picked the truck up instead.
When I got home, I made some calls and placed a few last orders for the build on the truck and set my attention to processing the photos from Stone Mountain. It was a disjointed evening for sure, but I managed to get some decent photos from the trek finished and a blog post written about it. Surprisingly, I was able to get things finished at a reasonable hour and got to bed so that I would be fresh to get started with the truck on Saturday morning.
Toni and I went to pick up the truck when they opened up first thing in the morning. A couple of hours later, we were back home and I was turning wrenches on it swapping out the exhaust, pulling some parts off, and bypassing that stupid Auto Start/Stop feature that is terrible on a motor, the starter, and battery. The next day, I did the full detail on it to make it look like a new truck. From there it was off to get the windows tinted, and then to Alpine Performance and Offroad for the suspension work, wheels, and tires. Yep, August was the month of the truck and hardly anything else got done during that month.
I ended up with a bit of a distraction from all the things that were going on during the August and September period with a request from Sierra. She and her boyfriend, AJ were wanting to have a “JCPenney” styled shoot. You know, the ones from the 80’s and 90’s where all the awkward poses were used and the photos looked rather odd? Of course, I accepted the assignment, but I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out. I am still very much trying to learn the art of posing and portraiture, so to purposely avoid the best practices and go for something comical was a little strange for me. They sent me some inspiration photos of what they were looking to have done, and I decided to build up the set in kind of the same style with neutral warm colors. It didn’t take too long to get things ready, with the longest part steaming the backdrop since it was the first time I had used it out of the box.
The shoot went well, and we all had a really good time goofing around and not taking anything too serious. They had great ideas for poses and pulled off the awkward expressions quite well. Almost too easy if I’m really being honest. Hmmm, maybe they weren’t awkward expressions for them after all. At any rate, I shot a bunch of photos and ended up editing over the next two days to put their package together. They were happy with them, and I actually leaned quite a bit about portraiture by making an effort to do things that don’t actually work for a photo. I’ve always said we learn more from our mistakes than we do our successes. For this particular shoot, mistakes were made on purpose, so it was through the mistakes that the success happened. There is a lot to be said for how beneficial that has been for me.
While September seemed like a pretty calm month for photography, several things that had been going on throughout the previous months were coming to a head. During the Summer, I became an affiliate with Red River Paper which is a company that has been supplying my print materials for all my in-house printing since 2007. I have loved their papers and the quality of print that I can achieve with them, especially at the price point. I do have an affiliate link active here on the website, so any time you visit their website through my link and purchase papers, I get a little bit of credit. While getting this set up, I was approached by Red River for a blog entry that they wanted to do on me and my photography. Of course, I agreed to the interview and that process was completed during the following weeks. By mid September, Red River had published the blog entry for all to see. If you are interested, you can find it here.
Red River now makes the fourth company that I have been associated with through my photography. They join the ranks of Singh-Ray, B&H Photo, and Amazon. Each of these partnerships means a lot to me, not so much for the small passive income that they can generate, but the fact that these respected companies see value in what I am creating and think that I can actually help them. Just remember that any time you need products from any of these vendors, just use these links to get there (copy the links and make them shortcuts on your desktop for ease of use), and any purchases you make will throw a few pennies my way without it costing you anything extra. It is a great way of supporting my business and showing these companies that they were right to partner with me.
By the end of September, the truck was coming together quite nicely with the last little bit of parts coming in for it. I had the tonneau cover installed, and the rock sliders had just been delivered which were ordered when the truck arrived at the dealer. There was a six-week lead time for those since they were built to order by CBI Offroad. I spent the afternoon with Toni trying to install the sliders with a lot of rain falling leading up to Hurricane Helene which would actually hit the following day. Due to all kinds of installation issues, I had to abandon the installation because I was getting frustrated with different fitment issues. The plan was to start again the next day.
Well, the next day saw Helene rolling through with lots of wind and rain. At Toni’s suggestion, I didn’t go down to start on anything with the truck in case we lost power. Well…we lost power, and it was out for several subsequent days. During that time, we had to go to a hotel in Huntersville. We had it easy, as this hurricane was an event for the NC mountains that turned into a topographical disaster that changed the landscape. The devastation and death that was left in its wake was something that we are just not accustomed to seeing out this way. Whole towns were wiped off the map, and Interstates were shut down because the road was just no longer there.
While I eventually won the battle with the truck installations, everything West of here was shut down which limited what I was able to get out and photograph. All of the state parks were closed, and there was just an eerie air about everything. It just didn’t feel right to be out photographing things, especially the landscape which was what I would typically be focused on during the Fall. This continued through September and into October. Oddly enough, after dealing with a lot of rain, we now seemed to be in our second drought of the year. With no rain, no clouds, and nothing but bright, sunny skies, I wasn’t seeing conditions that I wanted to go out and photograph in. I tried my best to get out and do something with the camera as I was starting to feel a bit creative, and I wanted to capitalize on that feeling. This time of year, I would typically be doing landscapes to capture the Autumn color, but none of those areas were accessible which prompted me to work with more of my decay subjects and rural scenes. Fortunately, I was able to get a bit of the seasonal color with those subjects around home.
By the end of October, small portions of the Blue Ridge Parkway were starting to open. I decided to take advantage of that and hope that I could find a little bit of the color left on the trees. I did find a bit, but nothing like what I would have liked to have seen. Most of the leaves had been stripped by the hurricane, and it was kind of a drab year anyway after a two-month drought during the Summer. I did find some workable conditions along the Blowing Rock section of the Parkway and captured some landscapes finally.
During those closing days of the month, I was starting to feel like I had gotten my groove back. I was finding myself thinking through the photographic process less and less while my instincts guided me as they once had. I was again finding joy in the process of photographing different scenes. In short, I was starting to feel normal once again. It had been a very long year, but I felt that I was coming out on the other side of it better off than I had started. I had the drive and motivation to create images once again, and I was feeling more upbeat about it all.
This continued on through the month of November. While not much really took place of any significance, I was steadily getting out and shooting. I even made it back to Outlawed Restorations for what was going to be a quick session with a car that had been moved out of the woods. That car also happened to be the one that has the honor of being the first shot of 2024, and was Dean’s dad’s car. It all just clicked with that trek and I was out there for hours and I created enough new photos to fill two blog entries. I really connected with my rusty subjects and once again found that this is the kind of photography that really calls my name.
Feeling like my creativity was coming back and I felt that maybe my photography did matter to a degree, I started to look at workshops for the first time since the beginning of last year. I didn’t want to go overboard with them and just wanted to take things kind of slow to get started. I knew that the economy was still not that great and going to photo workshops is certainly a luxury purchase. Since I had so much fun on the mundane workshop last Spring, I figured that I would grow on that and take some of the things that I have learned from that experience and create a better workshop around the same topic. The first workshop that was released for 2025, was a Photo Walk workshop in downtown North Wilkesboro in early April. I’m going to be covering the art of photographing the mundane, but I’m expanding it to a fairly general photography experience so that we are more free to photograph whatever we are interested in during the morning hours. As I did last time, the workshop will be kept to a half day to avoid wearing anyone out and to make it more accessible to those who just can’t dedicate a full day to a learning experience. If this sounds like fun, click that link and get signed up.
You will also see another change in the process by which you sign up. In the past, I have had the workshop participants pay for the workshop in full at the time of sign-up. This was great for me, right up until it was time for the actual workshop. I always had to deal with the threat of participants canceling or the weather causing issues. In those cases, I would end up having to refund money, or reschedule. At Toni’s suggestion, I started to do a non-refundable deposit as part of that payment so that if I had to refund the money, my expenses would be covered through PayPal as well as time spent putting together the educational and informational emails that I send out prior to each workshop. This year, I am simplifying things by only charging the non-refundable deposit at the time of sign-up. The remaining balance is due on the day of the workshop. This way, I am not holding onto anyone’s money which might end up being refunded, and if there is a cancelation, there is nothing that I need to do on my end short of expecting one less participant. We will see how it goes, but I think that this is a fair way of doing things going forward. Let me know if this works for you.
On the last day of November, I had a family photo shoot scheduled down in the area of Lake Norman. This was the first family shoot that I had done in a year or so, but I was feeling very confident in my ability to make it happen. The creativity had returned, as well as my overall confidence. The only issues that I faced on the day of the shoot was that I was scheduled to get there no earlier than 10:30 and they were looking for about an hour-long shoot. This put me at nearly the worst part of the day for lighting. Adding to that was the fact that there were very few clouds forecasted to be in the sky, and the temperatures that were supposed to be in the mid 50’s were now looking like upper 30’s and lower 40’s for the time I was going to be out there. They were looking for outside photos which was going to put me to the test.
On the day of the shoot, I arrived to find all the conditions were just as I had feared. Fortunately, they were wanting the time to be spent around the back of the house which was in the shade. This helped with the strong sunlight, but in order to get the surroundings exposed correctly, I was going to have to blend flash and ambient light using only the speedlites that I had brought due to the high winds that would have knocked over my studio strobes. As it turned out, one of my speedlites and the umbrella did get blown over, but there was no damage to either, fortunately. That certainly wouldn’t have been the case with the much heavier studio strobe.
The shoot went for right at an hour, and I ended up with 27 edited photos from the shoot which were delivered the following day. It was the most successful family session that I have done, and the photos turned out beyond amazing. I had neglected to bring model releases because I was not holding out hope due to the conditions. Even when I was finished with the shoot, I didn’t think that I was going to have anything spectacular to show from it, so I didn’t go for the digital release that I carry on the phone. After processing the images, I was really sad that I didn’t have everyone sign the releases at the time of the shoot to make sure that it was alright for me share them. Not wanting to inconvenience my clients, I didn’t request them to submit the paperwork afterwards, and I just delivered the products as promised. I will say that these are probably some of my strongest group photos which are not the easiest to shoot for a photographer, or at least not for this photographer
As I was starting to put this entry together at the beginning of December, I got to thinking about how I had run into a bit of a question mark in regard to the future of Singh-Ray at the end of 2023. They have been my favorite source of filters since the beginning of me doing this seriously and I have been an affiliate with them since 2018 or so. If you will recall, I talked a little bit about the problems surrounding Singh-Ray and the fact that they were no longer taking orders. I had finally made contact with my previous point of contact with the company and found out some of the details. A few months into this year, I was still trying to figure out what the future was going to be for them. I reached out to the basic email box that they had on the website and reminded them that I still had a workshop filter kit of theirs and was also wondering about any affiliate money that was due which I normally receive in February. It took just a little while, but I did get a message directly from Kanwal Singh who would be taking over the operations of the company.
He filled in more parts of the story and shared a bit about the legal mess that is being sorted through after the unexpected passing of the previous owner. Things kind of fell apart at that point, but he was committed to bringing Singh-Ray back to the standard that has long been set. This was great news, and I decided to sit back and see what was going to happen throughout the year. My thoughts were that by the Fall things would be starting to come around and would be back to some semblance of normality. By the time Fall actually came around, I was only seeing a slight change with the website saying that they were accepting new orders on a case-by-case basis, but they had to be emailed in with a request for what was needed. It was a start, but obviously things were not back to normal yet.
I decided to go back through my old emails and find the email address to Kanwal and send a follow-up message asking how things were going. This time, he responded right away and confirmed that things were still on track. He has been working on the resin filters while Howard Cargill is working on the glass ones. For those that don’t know, Howard has been with the company for 40 years and has always been the force behind how the filters were created. I’ve talked with him a couple of times and he is a great guy with a lot of passion for photography. At the moment, they are able to keep up with the demands of their ambassadors and some of the bigger clients, but they are not quite up to speed for a normal retail business just yet. There are still some legal issues that have to be worked out, but they have another engineer joining the team in the near future.
While it wasn’t the news that I was hoping for, it does seem like they are still on track to come back and start providing filters once again. I’ve hated making recommendations for other brands for the past year as I get questions about filters, but I’ve still maintained my personal filter kit and still use my Singh-Ray filters exclusively for my landscape and decay work. For the most part, you will always see at least one of their filters in the info line beneath each photo I share in the blogs. With any luck, 2025 will see Singh-Ray coming back as a force in filters and hopefully I will still be able to be a part of that journey. I would love to be a brand ambassador for them rather than just an affiliate. Get in touch….
December also saw the conclusion to possibly the longest-term client shoot I have ever done. You will remember that I mentioned earlier in this entry about the shoot that I did with the two classic Chevy’s back in early Summer. That all started with a consultation back in the Fall of 2023. The metal prints that were decided on by the client were finally selected in the first few days of the month, and by mid-December they had arrived here at the studio to be hand delivered. For those that are bad with calculating time, that is over a year from start to finish for this project. I’m happy that I was selected to do the shoot, and it was an enjoyable one. It just goes against my core to take this long to arrive at the finished product because I pride myself on completing client work very efficiently. The delays were all dependent on a garage/shop being built which was where the photos would be hung. He needed to have the walls to determine what size prints he was going to need. I guess I can appreciate that.
As the year came to a close, I was steadily working on this entry and realizing that once again, a year when I felt that nothing had happened, has turned into a rather full post with over 10,800 words up to this point. I really do enjoy putting a whole year into a single post because it gives me the opportunity to really reflect on all that I have been through in a more objective sense. I’m sure you can deduce that through most of the year I have been in a pretty low place when it comes to my photography. I’ve been questioning whether or not it mattered to anyone, and in all actuality, I was also wondering if it mattered to me, and if I mattered in the art community. All of this is so hard to really determine in any empirical way. I could base it on print sales, but there are so many variables that go into that type of purchase that I can’t really use it. I could look at how many times I’ve been hired as a photographer, but my services are a luxury and are very dependent on things far outside of my control. Maybe I could use social media interactions to gauge whether or not I am creating meaningful pieces? Nope, there is no rhyme or reason to how my posts get viewed. This year has seen very decreased levels of interaction in my daily posts. This has caused me to stop posting to Threads which is a relatively new platform that I joined not too long ago. I’ve tried everything that I can with Facebook and where I used to get hundreds or thousands of reactions to my photos, I am now doing good to get double digits in the likes category. Comments are way down, and when I share to the groups, there is no traction at all. Instagram has been largely dead for me for several years as most of my following is outside of the US. Oddly enough, that interaction has picked up a little bit here in the closing months though.
With no way of really determining whether or not I am improving, or even creating worthwhile photographs, I am left with only one determining factor as to whether or not I’m doing something worthwhile. That is my own enjoyment of the art. That is really the only aspect that I can gauge accurately. If I were to look at this as a business, I really would need to fold. I thought that was very much the case for this year as I filed my first “zero earning quarter” ever when I filed on October 1st. It was a gut punch as I had absolutely no income through that entire quarter. It was even looking like that was going to be the case for the final quarter of the year until I had a couple of client shoots and a mentoring session on the books. Thinking about the last six months of 2024, I had done so much better when I was just a hobbyist photographer. It really affected me since I do consider this a business venture these days.
It wasn’t until I was starting to get ready for tax season that I was looking at my overall earnings for 2024 compared to previous years. For months I have been bracing myself for what I thought was going to be the worst year on the books for income. The last half of the year accounted for just pennies and I felt like everything had been stagnant. However, looking at the numbers for the entire year, I was actually ahead of where I was the previous year. In terms of net profit, I was inline with my best year ever, but that was because I didn’t have nearly as many expenses in 2024. In short, I was keeping my head above water, but barely. Things were not as bad as they appeared, but the trend was still going in the wrong direction. My only lifeline this year has been a handful of some really big sales. I can never count on those, so I feel very fortunate that I had several opportunities through the early parts of the year for some sizable purchases.
Where does this leave me with my photography? I’m still not sure. It is something that I have put my everything into for many years. I have continued to learn more and more about photography while pushing my abilities in the field. I’ve taken on more types of photography so that I could become more well rounded, and made photography a very important part of my life for many years. I guess I really expect photography to be giving back a little more than it is. I really feel that this is one-sided and that while it still gives me a great deal of satisfaction and stress relief, I would really like for it to give me more in return for all the time and effort. I’m noticing that I am less and less willing to put forth the effort that I once was for my photography. Evidence of that has been seen throughout the previous year as I have let so many things force the photography to the back wall. I do still continue to create photographs, but I know that the drive that was once there just isn’t anymore.
What I mean is this, I would once plan on a trek days ahead of time. I would look forward to it, and then wake up excited to go out with the camera. It would usually become a full day with a long night of editing and blogging afterwards. These days, I kind of decide on the spur of the moment to go out. Most of the time it is because I have nothing better to do with the time. Other times, it is because the weather is something special. There is always the thought now of “why am I going out?” I feel like I am just making work for myself when I could be putting that effort into something else. It is really an odd evolution that I am just not familiar with.
I mentioned at the beginning of this entry about how I was struggling with whether photography is a hobby or a business, or if it can exist as being both. The business end is just not taking off which is a huge disappointment after so many years of working towards that goal. If the hobby of photography is no longer exciting for me, there is a lack of passion with it that shows in the final images. This means that there are fewer rewards that I will see within myself. I have to really start thinking about the possibility that photography will cease being rewarding or profitable for me, in which case, I would then need to look at the next step.
The amount of time that photography takes is so much more than anyone will ever know unless they are doing the same things. What most of you see is the time that I spend out taking the pictures. That is nothing in the grand scheme. I can spend four hours at a location which seems like a lot to the average person. That four hours, represents another four to five hours of editing and processing, followed by another four hours or so of typing in the blog. This is more than the average person works in a normal work day. Leading up to that session is daily learning of techniques and considerations made to how I can improve on what I have already learned how to do. There is planning, travel time, and constant disappointment with weather conditions when I have the time and drive to go out and shoot. I easily spend eight or more hours every day engaged in photography, whether it is with the camera, reading books on the subject, watching videos, reviewing my own photos and looking for ways to improve them, or just abstractly thinking about things related to photography. I don’t take time off, even when I am not wanting to deal with photography. Those are the days that I am thinking about it the most. I don’t think that it is out of the question to expect some type of return from all of that effort. If the return that I get from within isn’t sufficient, I start to look at the return from outside which is in the form of clients. When the clients fade away, and my own satisfaction is diminished, there is a very dangerous place that I find myself in.
There has always been a risk of my quitting as a photographer. Even when I first started out, I did it to see if I could actually take decent photographs. I knew that I could just quit and move on to something else if I chose to. I actually have done that, two different times, for lengthy periods both times. I have learned that those times are not forever, and I do always want to come back to photography. With that in mind, I made things official and started my business in 2019. This gave me the reason to stick with it even when I wasn’t really feeling like I wanted to. It actually worked quite well for a long time because when I wasn’t feeling creative, I still had a business to run and was still motivated to make that work. That has been put to the test during the last half of 2024 as business has just about dropped off to the point of nonexistence. How much sense does it really make to keep throwing my life at my photography? Why do I keep doing it? I’m not going to lie and say that my life wouldn’t be so much simpler without photography. There is no doubt that it would be.
This is where I’m at in my photography, at this point.
Of course to add to the issues that I’m feeling, I went on a trek during the latter half of December which turned out really great. Even though I only got one photo from the day, I considered it a huge success and it uplifted me quite a bit. I even had the thoughts of coming back to this blog and pulling out a pretty large chunk of the negativity that I had just finished typing. Yeah, it was that good of a photo. Because there was only the one photo, I wanted to give some incentive for social media followers to visit the blog to see the shot, so I decided to use a quick cellphone grab that I had sent Toni as the photo to tease the blog entry. I posted that cell shot, and then pasted the link into the post. I started out by explaining that this photo was just a quick cellphone capture and to see the actual photo, the blog would need to be opened. I made that very clear in the post.
Much to my dismay, I started to get comments about how good the picture was and how they thought that they could recognize it as a Bug. I would respond to the comment and confirm that they had gone to the blog and seen the actual photograph that I had created within the post. They hadn’t. In some cases, they weren’t even sure how to get into the blog, even after I shared the link two more times within the comment thread. To add insult to injury, in no time at all, I had 77 reactions on the cell photo, 35 comments, along with three shares on the post. That is more response than I get off of posting single photos, or even other blog links when I have an edited photo as the thumbnail. In comparison, the previous trek had only 29 reactions and 15 comments. This one featured a thumbnail with a fully color graded image which had been one of my favorites from the session. The only thing that I can take away from this experience is that my crappy cellphone snapshots are better than the thoughtfully composed ones that I shoot with a professional level camera which have been painstakingly tweaked through post production. Am I really that out of touch with what constitutes a good photograph?
Maybe this is a better photo after all. I mean, I have placed the bug on the right third, though it is not at an intersecting point. I have lots of disjointed elements within the scene. The tires help to tell the story of the old car, and the lawn mower handle creeping in at the right edge is most certainly helpful for the story while keeping the eyes within the frame. I get it, this is a strong photo and obviously is much better than the one that I spent 30 minutes trying to get the right angle on, used two different filters, and then processed for roughly 45 minutes. I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time.
Of course, I am kidding and I know that there is just no comparison between the two photos. It just goes back an argument that I am always having with myself about social media. It serves a purpose, but is it worthwhile enough to justify the time spent on maintaining it. The response that I have received on this post has really made me wonder if I am just part of the noise and that it doesn’t really matter what I post.
Many years ago, I was researching an online photo contest that happened yearly which I had entered in something like 2006 or 2007. My photo had placed in the contest and had been selected to be a part of the book that was being produced and I could buy one of these books (for around $100.00) because what an honor it would be to show others my winning photograph. The more I researched the contest, the more I realized that this was just a stock photography farm and they would award the same accolades to photographers that submitted photos taken while their lens cap was still attached (as an experiment to prove what kind of company this was). They didn’t care what the photos looked like because they were going to sell a good percentage of the books to the photographers who had submitted their images. Oh, and did I mention that you could purchase an award from them to display with your new coffee table book? Yeah, this was a great contest to win. To add insult to injury, you signed over certain rights to the photo which allowed them to use it and to distribute it as a stock photo. I’m starting to equate social media with the same type of thing. We create content that benefits the platform, never ourselves.
That is an argument that I will continue to have with myself as long as I am involved with photography. I really wish that I could exist without social media, but after almost a year trying, I did notice the significant slowing of business and web traffic to this site. If I could figure out a way to get traffic to this website without social media, I would do it in a heartbeat. I need to hire a business manager because I am just not good at the business end of things, but at the same time, I can’t afford a business manager on staff. I can barely afford the free help that Toni provides during my portrait sessions.
All that being said, we have found ourselves at the end of the year and the last photo that was shot. I was really hoping for this to be an epic photo and one that embodies what my artistic vision has been all about. Instead, we have a smoke image that was made in the studio on December 29th during flickering power outages from a storm system that we were in. This brings us to the close of 2024 with more photographs that I can count having been shot between the two cameras. As far as keeper photos, it is looking like 749 files have been retained which probably means around 6-7000 clicks of the shutter based on my averages. I really hope that you all have enjoyed the photographs as well as the stories about how they were created.
As I have mentioned a few times, the photography is something that I am passionate about and enjoy it immensely, for the most part. The blogging end of it, like what you have read here is a labor of love that supports this creative outlet and gives it a sense of purpose in a way. The business end is something that is not as pleasurable for me, and because of that, tends to get overlooked far too often. If you would like to support my photography, I make prints of all of my photos which I will sell directly to you. This does wonders for the business aspect as it tells me which types of photos are most popular, and the print purchases help to fund future treks as well as the equipment needed to capture the photos in the first place. If you are a photographer, consider signing up for either a workshop or a mentorship. I am always happy to help you achieve your own creative goals. If you are purchasing through Amazon, B&H, or Red River (and Singh-Ray when they are fully back), use the links that I have provided prior to purchase and I will get a few pennies without it affecting your price at all. If all else fails and you just want to show some love for the work that I do, there is always the donate button down at the bottom of these blog entries. Think about it like buying me a cup of coffee or something. These “tips” add up and do help out through the year.
I appreciate each and every one of you, and especially those of you who have managed to make it through this entire blog post. These yearly reviews do get a little lengthy, but as you can see, there is a lot that happens through the year. There is even more that is thought about through the year which can have a huge impact on the treks and photos that you will see through the year. I hope that you find these yearly reviews beneficial and worth your time to read. I sure enjoy them as it gives me a wonderful platform to compare how I progress through the years, or in some cases stay the same.
I wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year. Hopefully, I will be back later today with another blog entry about a trek that I have just been on. I have some ideas, but the weather isn’t looking all that great for photos as of the time of this writing.
Thank you all for making 2024 the year that it was and for staying with me during my very long lasting slump.
Until next time….
Wait!!! Stop!!! Hold the presses! I’m not done yet.
As of 9:32pm on the 31st, I have a brand-new last image of the year. After shooting 14 frames in Yadkin County, I have a more fitting final image to the year. This one was of a type of subject that I am known for and one that I was really drawn to photograph. I think that it is also quite fitting that I chose to make this one black and white which makes a nice bookend to the year with the first photo being done the same way. I really have enjoyed shooting black and white this year and imagine that I will continue doing more photos this way as time goes on. There is something about it that adds another dimension to the photo, and now that I am much better at seeing in black and white, I am seeing more opportunities to use this form of photography.
I still hope to be out while you are reading this doing something with the camera for New Year’s Day. I know that the weather is forecast for clear skies, windy, and cold which might cause me some issues, but I do have an idea that might just work with those conditions. It will just be a matter of timing as I have some commitments to handle in the first part of the day. Hopefully, I will be right back here again later on with a fresh blog about the trek that I have just been on.
OK, I’m really going to wrap it up now. Sorry for going so long. Happy New Year ya’ll!!
Until later today????…..
