Whew. Been a long month since I left Hawaii to go sailing in circles for RIMPAC 2014. A lot has happened during that month, but I have a quick couple of days in port with connectivity before I head back home, so here is the quick update.
Shortly after heading out to sea, I got an email via my web site wanting to book me for a wedding. I responded that I had no wedding experience, she said it was ok, she was willing to take a chance on a new photographer based on the images she and her finance saw on my site. So I was mostly totally stoked, with a side of nervous. I started re-reading and researching and doing everything I could to prepare to shoot my first wedding right after I got back to SD. But as the emails went back and forth I started to get a bad feeling. First off, when I asked about a rehearsal the reply was basically, "what rehearsal?" It went downhill fast from there and now it looks like this was simply someone attempting to catch me with the standard overpayment scam... sure, your uncle is paying and sent me a check for twice the deposit... don't worry, I'll happily deposit it then send the difference on to your florist before it clears.... NOT! I'm not sure what feels worse, how excited I was that someone actually wanted to hire me for a wedding based on looking at my work, and finding out it was just a scammer, or the fact that someone actually thought I was gullible enough to fall for something that obvious? It would have been great to have my first wedding gig, but oh well. Guess I will have to keep waiting for that one.
Next, I finally published my first book. During the free trial period I set up for the first week, just over 200 people downloaded it, so I started to let myself hope that was going somewhere, but in the week since the free trial ended a whopping 1 person has purchased it. I guess I should be stoked that I actually sold one copy, but even though I told myself I was prepared for the book to flop, I find I had let my hopes build up a little bit so it still hurts to face reality.
Navy wise, took a big hit as well, but that has nothing to do with photography so won't go into details here, let's just say it added to all the ups and downs and I was definitely ready for a break when we pulled back into Pearl Harbor.
Mostly I wanted to turtle into my shell and just hide all weekend from the world, but I knew that I couldn't give into that feeling, I had to at least try to keep moving forward and see what would happen, so I threw some feelers out and connected with a couple more models from Model Mayhem and planned a pair of shoots. Really glad I did, because both models were absolutely amazing. Beautiful, fun, easy to work with, really a reminder that it is worth it to stick with things and keep shooting. The first shoot was just for trade with a model looking to build her fitness portfolio. We met up in a park, then took a couple of field trips because we were just having fun shooting so we decided to keep it going. Here are a few unedited teasers from that one just to give you an idea of what we got:
The next day I was back to Makapuu'u beach for a yoga shoot. I first wound up at this beach last January when a couple of friends had a wedding there, and have been wanting to do a yoga shoot with waves crashing ever since. Tried last time I was here but it didn't pan out. This time I had a great model, the weather cooperated wonderfully, and we got some awesome shots. Again, some unedited teasers:
Only downside to this shoot was I may have lost a flash and a remote to a rogue wave... I managed to catch the flash and trigger before they were pulled out to sea, but when I pulled it out of the water, I actually got a shock from touching it, so I know the battery compartment flooded, and who knows what else. I am trying them out right now, will have to see what the final damage is in a day or so. But I think the shots were worth it.
Didn't make it to the fire spinning jam session or to the fireworks, there was too much beer and hot tub to distract me. Now it's time to head back to the ship and get ready to head home, back to San Diego, then on to Burning Man. Lots of editing to catch up on, and need to post some more stuff to the Arcanum to continue my journey there. Just wanted to drop a quick update here with some actual photos, while I had connectivity and was able to do so.
So to summarize, paradise is wonderful, but I am very ready to head home, despite meeting some wonderful people and getting some great images. And really, even though my Naval career might be winding to a close and it discourages me that my photography career isn't picking up fast enough to give me retirement confidence, the view from my office still doesn't suck.
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