This is Mr. Frosty. Mr. Frosty is in Denton, TX...the place I grew up. Well, actually I moved around a lot as a kid and I moved to Denton as a college sophomore and moved away 7 years later. However, I still feel a deep connection to it. It's only 12 miles from where I live now, but I don't get much of a chance to spend time in Denton. Denton has grown into a pretty big city/college town, but people still picnic on the courthouse lawn and and you can feel pretty safe walking down any street at any time of the day. People in Denton could care less what kind of car you drive. Live music can be heard any night of the week and you could eat for a year without ever having to hit a chain restaurant. Tonight I was working on a project for a client in Denton and roamed around the places I used to love. A deep feeling of nostalgia washed over me and I was a little lot heartsick for Denton. It's the place where I met every single one of my best friends. It's where I met my wife and learned to dance. We even had our children delivered in a Denton hospital. If you asked me why I don't live there now, I probably wouldn't have a good answer. I used to think I had to be close to Dallas, as if Dallas was the big time. Now I realize that,in the words of Billy Joel, "if that's moving up, I'm moving out". Will I ever move back to Denton? I'm not a big fan of change, so I don't know. But I'll always dream about it. If I could convince all my friends to come with, I would in a heart beat. What does this have to do with photography? I'm not sure. Maybe it's about how we need to look back to the basics? Maybe it's about looking deep in yourself and trying to find out what you need, as an artist and as a person? Maybe it's finding beauty in other places? Maybe it's about not having to try and out do everyone in University Park? I think I need to call some old friends.

Why no recent blog posts? Well, it's because...(wait for it)...I kinda forgot I had one. That is until my buddy Stephen Karlisch asked me why I hadn't updated it. So, here we go. The picture above used to be in my portfolio and I'm not sure why it isn't now and if I should put it back in. Sometimes the memories of the actual shoot or personal feelings toward the person you are shooting cloud your judgement and the actual picture isn't as good as you think. Or maybe I just took it out because I didn't have many black and white photos in my portfolio and thought it was out of place? Maybe I'll put it back in soon...I still really like it and that should be enough, right? After I admitted to forgetting about my blog we started discussing what drives us in photography, what we are trying to achieve. Aside from jobs that we do for money only, why do we choose to shoot a given subject? Is there a mood or a story we are trying to tell or are we just trying to document what is happening already. We started tossing ideas back and forth because it's not always easy to articulate. What I learned from trying to explain to Stephen is that I'm trying to manufacture a decisive moment that doesn't look manufactured. Hopefully is makes you wonder what happened right before or right after the shot was taken. That is my ultimate goal. If you don't know what the decisive moment is, Google it...it's a concept that I'm just not good at explaining. One idea I use to explain it to myself, though, is that 'a photographer can take a series of photographs of the same subject with the same lighting in the same scene and one image is always better than the rest'. That is the decisive moment of that shoot. The light was perfect and the subject's mannerism or facial expression is giving you more than you expected. A lot of times the decisive moment is explained with street or documentary photography. You can sit on a street corner and photograph things that are happening and sometimes something really interesting happens...and the light is great...and you capture something that is unusual. That is also a decisive moment. That fraction of a second was different than all the other seconds you sat there watching.

Not going to lie, business is slow. But that's no surprise to anyone in this industry. One of things I've learned is that you must keep working, even when there is no client. You have to shoot because 'that's what you do, that's what you are', not because someone called or emailed you. I've really been itching to shoot something fun and as it turns out some good friends of mine were trying to raise money for their adoption. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to contribute something to the adoption of a child and possibly get to work on something cool. I was in luck. Crossfit Ft. Worth called and said they'd like a commercial shoot done for their gym and in turn they'd donate money to my friends.

I don't usually shoot athletes in action because there are a bunch of guys out there that are doing and it's THEIR THING. So, I decided to shoot it my way. First, I wanted to avoid the two edge light one beauty dish f22 look that is so popular now. Not to disrespect anyone, it's a great look...but it's already being done well by others. Why not see if I can shoot it a little different. My approach was to shoot it like a body line or figure study with heavy light and shadow contrasts.

Another lesson I learned, from the awesome photographer Jeremy Cowart, was that sometimes you light the subject and they do their thing. Sometimes they wander out of the light or into a different position. It's interesting to see what happens when they do this. It doesn't have to perfect as long as it's interesting. Other photographers I worked for would stop the shoot and re-light or reset the subject as soon as the slightest change occurred. That's great for them, but I'm afraid I'd miss if I didn't let it flow. So, this shot isn't exactly as I had in my head when I started but I really liked what was happening. More importantly the client was loving it. Look at the feet of the subject, how they disappear into the black. I could have stopped the shoot and re-lit to make sure everything was being lit equally...but I loved how the image seems to be appearing out of a ball of energy in the middle of the room...much like a fireball. To me, it makes it more mysterious not having it completely grounded.

This is how I roll

Ring, phone. Ring.

I always wonder what other photographers do while they wait for the phone to ring. I know no one admits to sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, but I also know there are days when you aren't shooting, editing or delivering. What are these other photographers doing? Sometimes I feel like the Maytag repair man. I'm sure they do to. I once reached the end of the internet.

One thing I'm doing is trying to inspire myself to shoot personal stuff. I have a really bad habit of waiting to get all the details perfect before setting out to shoot, and perfection is rarely achievable...so I don't get it shot. I need to quit that.

In other news, I saw that Entrepreneur is using my cover (along with 2 others) to sell subscriptions. That's cool, to me. It's an additional verification that they were happy with it.

How about some old work?

Everyone likes to post the latest and greatest. You should always be moving forward and trying new things...but there is something to be said for the great work you've already done. When I first started I thought I wanted to shoot models and started to do a lot of model tests. Eventually I changed direction to more real people and story telling, but I don't regret those early shoots even though they don't really have a place in my current portfolio. Sometimes I like to go back and take a look at the old stuff and try and figure out where I was coming from and what was inspiring me.

Every time Romo gets blamed, I picture him doing this. Then I hope and pray someone will give me lots of money to run the pic.