I’ve been really fortunate in that, throughout all the coming and going in my life, I’ve maintained a pretty close-knit group of friends that dates back to the middle of high school. With two of them getting married in the coming month we all headed up to a lake house in Michigan for a recent weekend. Bachelor party jokes aside (we’re a pretty low-key bunch), it was a good reminder of what’s important in life, on many different levels. To have 11 people in one place that you’ve known for years, well, I’m happy that I’m lucky enough to have that.

As for tomorrow – another shoot for a great international client. (I won’t name who until the shoot is in the bag – it’s my bit of superstition). I’m really thankful for that as well.

I recently got back from SF where I made some images working on a new personal landscape series. This image has nothing to do with that but is one of my favorites from the trip. Everyone needs an image of the Golden Gate in one way or another, right? I’ll be back in SF from May 25 – Jun 1.

Somewhere near Muncie, Ind. coming home from a few days in Lafayette.

A few more leftover frames from New Orleans/Bayou

Though I wasn’t in New Orleans to shoot for the most part, I still went out to look for still images on the street.

It seems that most places I look people close to me are still trying to figure out where they are, why they are, how they are, etc. Finding a finished space probably isn’t the best thing at this time anyways.

For the most part I like keeping words to a minimum here, but this summer has been so busy and drastically different (in great ways) than the past few months that I just feel the need to recap. From pretty much mid-June through, well last weekend I scarcely had a day off. I was teaching a high school photography class to kids mostly from Pilsen through Columbia College. That was every day during the week, plus some field trips and a week in downstate Ill. for a college experience. In addition to that, I was at 4 weddings making pictures for good people I knew, mostly from my high school days, was doing other freelance work and even started a new adjunct position at another local art college. I ran two mud filled races (one of them with my sister) that both included ridiculous obstacles, one with mountain biking. (Let me just say that it feels pretty good to place 3rd in your age group when you are competing against people who take their mountain biking very seriously with $1000 + bikes  and fancy outfits and you are riding a 1985 neon green Giant because it’s the only thing in the family garage that you and your sister can fit on, and it still seems to change gears when it’s supposed to…sometimes). I’m really happy that since last year I’ve adopted running in these weird things, I can just throw them in the wash instead of in the garbage after a mud adventure.

One of the grant proposals I’ve been working on as of late prompts me to consider my future plans, what I would do when the proposed granted project has run its course. It’s a weird thing to think and to answer this way, but I would do just what I am doing now. There’s room for improvement and adjustment in each area of course, but in general it’s strange to think that I’m actually doing what I want to be doing. That in and of itself is worth any amount of work from my perspective.

Ah, and the above picture is my hotel room in Galena, Ill. where I was mostly working but got time for one quick run up a trail, through the woods to a bench at the top of a hill with a nice view of the Mississippi on a hazy, cloudy summer day.

ok, so back to the pictures for the next post.

I’m in Bloomington, Ill. for the week as part of a course I’ve been teaching part time (full time for this week). Things are sparse, campus is pretty empty…the way I like it for now. A week of teaching and reading. I don’t expect to update this blog again for a few weeks as there’s too much work to edit when I get home, and I won’t really be shooting here. Unless I find more interesting things immediately surrounding me, which may or may not happen.