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Monday, January 13, 2014

Chinchilla Adoption Photographer

If I were a perfume, I would smell like Rodinol developer. Actually, while that sounds good, I would probably just smell like a keyboard with a hint of PhotoShop. Not nearly as cool.

The book chapter that I wrote for Discovering Architecture: Built form as cultural expression was released yesterday through Kendall Hunt, so that's pretty cool. It has five of my photos in it to accompany the text for my chapter "Architecture Abandoned." I don't think it has a preview available yet, but mine is the first chapter…you know, 'cause I'm a big fancy deal. Or they are alphabetized…I'm not sure.

Today classes start. I am teaching materials at 2:00 and taking History of Geographic Thought at 6:00. This means that I have to stay awake until 9:00 at night. I am a morning person, but I may have to reconceptualize 'morning' to mean, afternoon and night. We'll see how that goes. Violet is home sick today, so I'm on duty until Pepe gets home at 1:00.

Yesterday, I watched another great youtube video with photographer Jeff Cable (he's an event photographer and works at Lexar…he also photographed for team USA at the last winter and summer Olympics). The talk was How to Photograph Events and Make Money Doing It on the B&H channel. I wasn't sure if it was going to be helpful since I'm not an event photographer, but it really was great in terms of workflow and the mindset for how to prepare for and capture moments. When I was done, I actually thought that being an event photographer might be interesting and could be a good way to stay involved in what I love and earn money. I still need to learn a lot more before I could do something like this - that's a lot of pressure and I'd hate to mess up recording someone's big day. 

Really Small Lizard Discovery #1
Mission, Texas
So maybe, I could record some smaller events until then, such as: 
  • Checking the drugstore pregnancy test
  • Finished the penultimate semester of college
  • Regularly scheduled car maintenance
  • Returning library books before the due date
  • Making a movie choice at Redbox
  • Going to a well visit with your doctor
From there I would work my way up to mid-level events like: Rex comes back from his big visit to the Vet, Really small lizard discoveries, and Chinchilla adoptions. After that, the sky is the limit!


At the end of the talk, he said that anybody could email him their work and ask for some feedback, so I screwed my courage to the sticking place and did just that. I was really surprised that he emailed me back the next day - and said:
Your work is VERY good and you should be proud of it. I get lots of emails from people and I have to say that your web site was refreshingly good. Keep it up!!!
I didn't even have to movie review edit that so it sounded good! I was so thrilled - I mean, even if the website had sucked, I'm sure he would have found something vaguely encouraging to say like, 'keep learning' or 'could be worse' or he could have just not responded at all, so this is some of the first non-family/friend feedback that I've gotten. I'm probably going to have this tattooed on my forehead. Or at least printed on a t-shirt…

This came at the perfect time too, because I was just beginning to be a bit of a Debbie Downer which makes it hard for me to work on new things because I keep thinking: maybe I'm just wasting my time.  So, if you haven't already, you should check out my website at http://photogirafika.com...and feel free to commission me to shoot your portrait!

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations! That is a big deal on the book and the comments regarding your work. You are very talented and inspiring actually. I thank you for your bravery in exposing your talent and for sharing it with all of us.

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