creativeLIVE hangover

It's been over two months since I was with Zack Arias and the Sacred Six at creativeLIVE. It's been a really weird experience for me since then. It really feels like I had the night of my life and I'm trying to pull myself off the bathroom floor the morning afterward.

Part of it is the critique. We call felt at least a little hurt {well, maybe not Mikhail ;-) } after our critiques. If I didn't feel confident in my work then, it should just get better from there, right?

Not For Me.

Now that Zack has moved the bar further up for me, it feels like it's even harder to reach out and try to grab it. Instead of my goals being 5 years away, now they're 15 years away. I've really been struggling with it. It feels like my photos are getting better, and my vision is clearer....but that last one... The Vision.... it's making it worse. Now that some of the fog has been lifted, I'm realizing that I need to rebuild my entire portfolio.

Those that have been watching the rewatch to the class and have been checking my website to see the photos for themselves that Zack and Meg trashed.... They're not there anymore. Those photos are GONE. (And they had to trash them for me because I couldn't do it.) At the wrap party after the 3rd day of class, I was sitting at the dinner table with my Android phone deleting those photos from my site. They needed to be gone. That work may have shown clients what I could do back then, but now... even the short period of two months.... that no longer represents me. The minute that Zack trashed my photos... it no longer represented me. I know I can do better, and Zack helped show me that if I settle... if I let an ounce of energy be wasted... I'll fall short of my goals.


So, for the last two months I've been doing a metric shit-ton of personal work to rebuild and reshape what I'm trying to show the world what I can do. By the July 4th weekend, I was exhausted. I didn't want to sit down and edit the paid work that needed to be done. My mind needed a break from trying to break every old photo out of my life. You know what though? That break was awesome. It allowed me to let my mind go, and wander, and at the end of the weekend I started having new creative concepts that I need to go shoot now. Then it hit me....

All I needed to do was relax and things would be easier?

That might not be entirely true, but relaxing gave me the ability to have creative thoughts again... letting my mind wander gave me 4 new photos that I sketched out into my notebook. Those 4 photos are going to be freaking hard to accomplish the way I want, but it'll be worth it.

I'm still planning on making a book and sending it to Zack and Chase: "Did I take a step forward this year?" I really hope that I have, but considering that most of that book's photos haven't been shot yet, only time will tell. All I know is that I need to impress Zack with my progress, but more importantly, I need to be a good enough photographer that I can feed my family as well as my soul, because to me there's nothing more important than that.