Finishing Strong

 Greatness is often determined by the size of the adversity as opposed the size of the merit. I look back on this year as a year that I felt  that I was going to making a decided march toward better and better photography. This hill of improvement toward the end of summer  started to deepen and look more like a valley of disappointment. The dots were not connecting and  personally I felt like I got kicked in the gut.  2013 looked like the train had turned the bend and was going to roll right over me. I unfortunately let my personal life doubts temper and influence how I felt about my photography

 A little bit of a break and a decision to go back and re look at the what steps I should be taking  to improve helped me  to see I had started to wander wide of the  direction I wanted to go. Going back  to the basics of everything really helped me  try to understand as well follow the directions given. You can't just improve and grow and have no roots. You have to go down as much as you go up.

 I started to  think is my shot level, instead of worrying about how this would  look like in collection. The basics of exposure  became more of a mantra  over should I post this on  Google+ or save it for my website. Check my edges more important than how many likes...

 I wish I could say I took home a big prize and the pretty girl asked for my number  but I'm content to say I know that shot I took now I could never have done last year.  I am content to say  I took less shots and was satisfied with more because I only took what I thought were good shots instead of banking on a myriad of shots for insurance.   I'm trying to be happy with the photographer I am instead of wishing to be the  guy in the video.

I feel personally like  something clicked..  I finally got into the Light Box community after over a year of trying. One of my shots got viewed well over 10 K times which is the highest viewership I have ever received (typically in the 800-1200). I got asked to shot part of a Wedding and shot some senior pictures for my friends daughters. Does this mean Chase Jarvis, Dave Duchemin, or Joe McNally are  looking over their shoulders... perhaps not. But it does mean that I am going to keep on pushing forward and trying to finish strong.