As you can tell by the lack of updates, I haven’t been shooting much. My personal life has been pretty chaotic, and although I think it has leveled out somewhat I can never tell, and my professional one has been… not stagnant, because I’ve been working, but it’s all been working on video projects for work, and consequently hasn’t resulted in much to be shown here. Perhaps when this next one is done I’ll share it with you though.

It’s a somewhat strange time of year in the blogging world. Everyone is getting very excited with Christmas fast approaching. You see lots of wishlists and photos of snow and “Christmas cheer” and so on, but I’m not really feeling it. I’m sure as a kid Christmas was fantastic, but I don’t really remember being a kid, so the nostalgia is lost on me, which I’m pretty sure it mostly why people still like Christmas anyway. How’s that for cynical?

I suppose one could pull the religion card and tell me to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, but I don’t really care about my own birthday, or anyone else’s even if it falls within the immediate vicinity of the time of this writing, so I’m not sure what the hype about a birthday for Jesus is. I mean I do, but I don’t. We don’t even eat cake for his birthday.

Worse is that while it would be best to celebrate that part, second best to celebrate the commercialism of it all, I find myself not even really asking for anything for Christmas this year. I mean, sure I’d love a new digital camera but I can’t very well point out that the cheapest thing on my list there would come to roughly $3,000. And let’s face it, neither relative nor reader is going to throw down that kind of cash for me.

So yeah, I’m finding myself quite uninspired for the time being. However, my brothers Andrew and Adam will be in town this weekend, here from Boston and Baltimore respectively, so perhaps I’ll have to bring them down to the couch and get some shots of them.

So anyway, tomorrow, the 15th, the family is going to Austin for the day to celebrate with my Dad’s side of the family. All well and good, and it’ll be over before I know it, but I always get really anxious at big family things. I’m sure I’ll take some photos there too, so you’ll likely see those tomorrow or the next day.

Anyway, I’m just rambling on. If you want to get me a gift, you all know where to find me.

I also mentioned that I shot many thousands of photos finding my particular niche and style. I believe in the first year I was shooting I fired 12,000 photos (on a Canon Digital Rebel/300D), and in the second year boosted that to about 16,000 (on a Canon 20D). As with any kid excited about a new hobby, at first I shot anything and everything. I produced countless photos with no apparent artistic intent. Not to suggest that this was wasted, as it provided a great venue to learn the technical aspect of photography, which has since become second nature as a result of those nigh 20,000 photos.

But as I progressed, I became less and less interested in shooting each and every subject that presented itself. At first this worried me because I thought I was losing steam in a hobby that I had initially invested nearly a thousand dollars in. This, to say the least, is a somewhat jarring proposition.

However I found that even as my interested in certain photographic subjects waned, in fact my interested in other areas increased almost exponentially. While I initially envisioned photography as simply a hobby, as well as primarily landscape and inanimate in nature, my style saw a subtle shift to portraits.

It wasn’t clear at first exactly how this worked, but as I started shooting people more and more, and really began to gain an appreciation for it. It’s a curious balance, since all indicators suggest that I suffer from social anxiety disorder. That being said, in many ways as soon as I take the camera out, I am suddenly right at home, and perfectly in my element.

My style, if described in a word, is calm.

The style originally just focused on standard portraits, which was primarily headshot, however the style has then adapted itself to my other shooting. The focus is still primarily people, however perhaps in less conventional settings. I love music photography, for example, and very much enjoy shooting concerts and musicians. I still enjoy an occasional landscape photo, but the simplicity in the composition has essentially been absorbed by my portrait style.

Recently I’ve taken my shooting into more studio settings, albeit in generally real-life surroundings. The manipulation of light is a powerful force for great work. Moreover, I prefer a more controlled, and calm shooting setting, and doing this in a deliberate photoshoot is much more possible than simply shooting your friends as you go about your day (although that hasn’t stopped).

Finding a deliberate style is no easy task, but once accomplished, makes the process much smoother, and generally more artistically satisfying. This blog will, in the future, illustrate the process of continually honing my style, and I’m very excited about that.

Keep it real, folks.