Summer so far...

Summer is a slower photography season for me, and honestly it is intentional. Its too hot outside, and I simply want to avoid being soggy and swampy if at all possible. I'm not necessarily saying I wont shoot your summer wedding, but I am not exactly going out of my way to book a bunch of work in July and August either.

That said, this time of year also has some personal significance to me. I just celebrated my 37th birthday (half way dead?) and the 31st of July is my own wedding anniversary. This year will mark 15 years, which, yes, makes me feel old.

I was planning to share some of my own insights after being married for so long, and maybe frame it as offering a bit of advice to some of my newlywed, or soon-to-be newlywed, clients. Honestly, I did not find the time to gather my thoughts like I had hoped, but now that I am thinking about this in real time I am not sure what I would say anyways. Who am I to give advice? The usual cliches about how the key to a successful marriage is learning to say "you're right, dear," or similar are dumb, and probably mysoginistic. You'll probably have a dad or uncle say something like this to you, so offer a courtesy laugh, roll your eyes, and move on.

For me, I feel like I am in a constant state of "figuring things out." When you first move in together, you have things to figure out: who sleeps on which side of the bed, whose toothbrush goes where, who does what chores, etc. Next, when you get a dog, you figure more things out. If you ever buy a house, you have even more stuff to figure out. If you decide to have children... you guessed it... you have way more stuff to figure out. Kids also get more expesive and complex as they get older, so that leaves you with at least 18 years worth of stuff you constantly have to be figuring out. We havent reached this next stage yet, but eventually the kids will be out of the house and we will have more to figure out yet again. When we get old, we will have even more to figure out when it comes to sorting out the details of our enevitable demise. Grim!

Do you get the idea yet? You'll figure it out. Figuring it out may look different for you than it does for someone else, too. I'm not sure that anyone truly knows what they're doing when it comes to all of this, but you figure it out as you go along. You don't really have another choice.

I didn't have much to say this month, so I'll just share some recent work instead. Here are a few more selects from a recent wedding I 2nd shot with @photography.byjulien. I was asked to primarily shoot film here, so I did.

My long time friend and bandmate reached about needing some promo photos for his new music. These were all shot at his house with a single softbox and flash, and I am pretty happy with how they turned out. His music is linked at the bottom of this photo set.

Of course I have to share some family frames.

A couple shots from the No Kings protest in Atlanta. I didn't shoot much here, but I showed up. I have more thoughts about all of this, but I will spare you for now.

Thanks for reading and subscribing as I figure out what the heck I am doing here! It means a lot.