Personal Life

I Started An Instax 365 Project And I've Got Some Feelings

It’s not the most unique idea in the world. Plenty of others have done some form of a, “do something every day for a year” project. I can’t say in absolute terms if anyone has tried a, “document what’s important to you that day every day for a year by way of Instax film” project before. It’s not about creating a radical new idea that will revolutionize the universe. I wanted something simple yet meaningful that I could do every day to bring a little joy into my life.

I Started An Instax 365 Project And I've Got Some Feelings

New Beginnings, Creative Stagnation & Life's Purpose

My life has changed significantly in the last half decade I’ve been absent. Five years ago my life consisted of traveling all around and documenting my experiences, writing educational content for websites and magazines, writing and filming informational videos related to creativity and photography, shooting weddings and conceptual portraits with models, and working on a myriad of projects to fill up my remaining waking time. But then, something changed.

New Beginnings, Creative Stagnation & Life's Purpose

Stress, Cancer and Moving Forward

   This is going to be more of a personal blog as opposed to my usual photography related posts. So please allow me to add in some photos of kittens to lighten up the mood. Now that formalities are out of the way, let's begin. As most of you reading this don't know, I developed a lump in my chest a couple of months ago. It came after a brief hiatus between suck and more suck. Life was looking great and then I started having car troubles. That's all taken care of now, but literally the next day, I felt a lump in my chest. It was like a stress bomb just hit and I was at ground zero. I let it go at first since I'm not the biggest fan of going to the doctors, but after 2 weeks, it didn't go away. I decided going to the doctors would probably be in my best interest (duh). I got there and of course, I was told what you never want to hear a doctor say. Because I didn't suffer any trauma and there weren't any other abnormalities at all, cancer was a possibility. After taking some tests, I got my results back a couple of weeks later. They told me they couldn't rule out anything, including cancer, but also that they didn't see anything. At all. As in, there was no lump being shown in the results...

Stress, Cancer and Moving Forward

Camping, Nature and Landscape Photography

   The number one thing I usually hear from people when referring to my work is how much they love my landscape photos. It always catches me off guard (and unintentionally annoys me), because I feel like those are the photos that I put the least amount of effort into. In fact, they account for such a small portion of my actual photography that I barely have more than a handful of shots in that genre. It's not that I don't enjoy landscape or nature photography, it's just that I rarely ever do it. My passion lies more in abstract and conceptual portraiture. With all of that being said, I've recently gone on a camping trip with a buddy of mine with the intention of boosting my portfolio with more current landscape photos. Well, of course it was also to have a good time, but he hooked me in with the thought of getting away to a secluded area and shooting...

Camping, Nature and Landscape Photography

Positive Meditation For Focus and Clarity

   Recently, I've learned the importance of meditating on a more consistent basis. I've noticed a lot of pessimism and negativity around me lately and it's gradually been taking its toll on my mental state. Once you get trapped in that negative state, it gets increasingly harder to remove yourself from all of it as time goes by. I started losing sight of some of my passions due to gaining a lethargic "what's the point" perspective on life. This was not only aided by negative mindsets, but also by less-than-great circumstances occurring in my personal life. It sort of snuck up on me and at one particularly bad point, it dawned on me that I was drowning in it. I liken it to the anecdote of the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water. If negativity is gradually added into your life over a long period of time, you won't notice just how much has been pilling up and draining you physically, mentally and emotionally...

Positive Meditation For Focus and Clarity

(I Can't Get No) Goddamn Sleep

   I’ve been unable to get anything more than 3-4 consistent hours of sleep a day for the past month now. Which in and of itself isn’t that bad so it’s not necessarily insomnia that’s the problem. I’ve gotten around that much sleep many a times in the past and I was fine. The problem is that I’m only fine for the first half of the day after I wake up, but I inevitably end up taking a thirty minute to hour long nap during the day. Again, that’s not that big of a deal, but after waking up from that short nap I feel way worse than I ever felt when I just force myself to stay awake or get a much fuller sleep. My body revolts and won’t let me sleep any longer and I’m forced “awake” with this heavy feeling of tiredness. My body is in a state of painful fatigue where I can’t focus on anything or do anything remotely productive, yet my body won’t let me fall asleep ‘cause it’s “too tired” to sleep. Along with that, my entire body aches as it’s screaming at me to just lay down and go to bed. I usually give in and lay down, but like I said I just can’t get back to sleep. So I end up just laying there for most of the rest of the day barely being able to accomplish much at all if it wasn’t already done in the first half of the day before the nap...

(I Can't Get No) Goddamn Sleep

Productivity and Moleskine Journal

   So I recently picked up a Moleskine journal for the first time. I've never really had any kind of nice journal before, except this cool Scooby Doo one when I was about 7. Usually whenever I needed to write things down in the past I'd just get those crappy, generic spiral bound notebooks that were 3 for $1 at Kmart. You know the type, everyone had them. Around the time middle school came around and I had my own computer that wasn't "the family computer", everything moved over digitally into wordpad (thanks windows 98). All of that aside, I've been wanting to switch things up. I pretty much use Evernote for everything nowadays, but I miss analog forms of writing. Not for any nostalgic reason, but I personally feel like I take more in when I physically have to write out my words. It physically demands more attention and the payoff for finishing up that long winded piece you were writing has a much more cathartic feel to it. Maybe that's just me though...

Productivity and Moleskine Journal

The Power of A Smile

   It's amazing how much someone's smile can change the course of your day. Yesterday I was really bored and so uninspired to do anything. I spent most of the morning sitting on the computer just wasting away, going from blog to video to twitter and so on. That is until I came across this video from a youtuber that I'm subscribed to. It's a simple video and at only 42 seconds long it's pretty short as well. The whole video details a guy jogging with his girlfriend who happens to be taking it slow and power walking with a very determined mindset. While she's concentrating on her set path, he doesn't want to leave her behind by jogging ahead, so he starts zigzagging around her with a giant smile on his face. At first I thought the video was edited and he made it look as if he was passing by her multiple times, but by the end I realized what was going on and it instantly put a smile on my face. Something about that glow he exerted with such a strong sense of bliss lifted me up and inspired me to go out and do something...

The Power of A Smile

Thoughts on Artistic Progression

   There's very distinct paths you can take when you take on photography. Some people get into photography to document life, to capture a moment in time that will never happen again. This is where photojournalism and event photography like concerts or weddings reside. Personally, my interest in photography grew out of a need to express myself. I found the fine art side of photography so fascinating and something just clicked when I picked up a camera and tried to capture how I was feeling. Those emotions eventually evolved into the creation of different photos and projects over the years. Photography just had a je ne sais quoi to it, it just felt right. I was always interested in drawing, painting and other similar art forms, but I was never any good at them. With my camera in hand, I had a skill I felt like I was actually good at...

Thoughts on Artistic Progression