July: A Blur of a Month

July was a surprisingly busy month, thankfully. The first week was spent mostly in Kentucky, with only one shoot on the books for late in the month – a story I had pitched. Ironically, those are the only photos from this month not included in here (the story hasn't run yet). 

I got the news at the end of my trip to Kentucky that I had been accepted to the Eddie Adams Workshop XXX, something that was completely unexpected and floored me. Following that acceptance email, I had my busiest month since moving to Los Angeles - not my most financially successful, but still busy. It was also rewarding knowing that the work wasn't work that just came to me (save for a couple), but stuff I sought out and made happen. It was a month where things clicked, which doesn't happen as often as I'd like. 

With how chaotic things were this month, I didn't get around to doing as many blog posts as I'd like to have. It would have been nice to have blogged after most of these shoots. So, I did my best to squish them all in here without completely overloading the post, as I always do. It's still overloaded. So it goes. 

Thanks for giving my photos and words a look-see.

4TH OF JULY IN KENTUCKY

KIDS TOUGH MUDDER

MMA AT LOS ANGELES MEMORIAL COLISEUM

MAYWEATHER VS MCGREGOR

GOLF AT LOS ANGELES MEMORIAL COLISEUM

GOD AT WORK FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

PORTRAIT WORK

SKYLENT DISCO FOR TIMEOUT LOS ANGELES

MAY: Faces and Places

May was a busy month, starting off with my first ever workshop, the Sports Shooter Academy, which was conveniently located just an hour south of me. It continued with a visit from my new friend Sam Navarro (who I get to see again soon!) and then a visit to see my grandfather in Seattle with my sister, and then a visit here in LA with my sister for our once a year get together.

I took a lot of photographs - some good, some bad - and had no idea how to blog about them. SO, I condensed them into big collages to break them down into basically three blocks of what this past month has been like.

I also released my first newsletter, for those interested. You can sign up for my quarterly newsletter here: Sign-up And you can see the first one here: Newsletter

Thanks to everyone who has signed up! And thank you for taking the time to look at my work here on the blog.

Sam's Visit

 Venice with Sam

Visiting Grandpa and Family

 Sibling Time

Good "Build It Yourself" Blood Marys

Some experiences need to be lived through video... or GIFs

2016 New Years Resolution Retrospective

A year ago I New Years tasked myself with making better portraits in 2016. Portraits have long been a daunting task for me. Photographing people directly is hard, I'm awkward, and there was a complex about vanity and posing and what it meant to take a portrait that I struggled to come to terms with. At the end of last year, I struggled to find good portraits I had made. I struggled to find any that really made me feel anything.

I think I made good on my resolution. There's still a lot of work to be done and I can't say that everything here is amazing, but it was a process and I welcomed it more than I ever have before. This year, I'm not ready to say this is what I want to get better at about anything in particular. I still want to get better at making portraits, and even more so, I want to get better about asking people if I can make their portrait. I also hope to make more video projects.  

I made a great deal more portraits than this, but I tried to distill the selection down to the stronger ones and to include the various opportunities I had. Hopefully they're worth your time. 

Thanks for looking and happy new year.