Dude, "Beetle Juice" is twenty years old...

... that's messed up.

The ball just dropped, and Mom & Chuck are out of the house. As a kick off to the embryonic new year (and as I type this) "Ready to Go" is blaring from my stereo. My defiant little fist-shaking declaration into the ether.

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Put Dark Haired Girl's Christmas gift of rubber boots to good use today. Went tromping around Charleston Falls with the Canon and 4x5 view camera in my backpack, in search of possible Miami County photo contest ideas. I swear I'm at least going to place, dammit. Anyhoo, here's a few shots I popped off with the Canon. I really want to take the final ones with my 4x5 to exploit its ability to capture phenomenal resolution and detail:








Not going to cut it for the photo contest, but they're pretty pictures nonetheless. Sometimes you just have to drop the "I'm a professional" crap and take pretty pictures.

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Well kids, 2007 has come and gone. I can't help feeling like I just stepped off The Vortex roller coaster at King's Island, all giddy with my head reeling like a drunken Irishman. What a year '07 has been! For the new year, I'm walking straight over and hopping in line to ride The Beast.

I've arrived at a resolution: To get out of my parents' house and out on my own before my 30th birthday this summer. A goal that's both necessary, and also ultimately attainable, I think. :-)

2008 is going to be a bone rattling brain scrambler of a year... a real white-knuckle thrill. Come along with me for the ride, won't you?

What a cruel prank: giving me New Year's Eve off... and then scheduling me first thing in the morning.

Oh, the joy of being a fast food drive through cashier.

Well, as "dire chance and fateful cockup would have it", a photographer position has just opened up over in Columbus, at Jeg's, a performance auto parts company. Just emailed a cover letter, resume PDF, and five or so sample photos. Wish me luck.

Quandary

Today is December 26th, which coincidentally is not only Boxing Day but also the beginning of Kwanzaa. Being a white boy from Podunk Ohio, neither apply to me but I thought I'd mention them anyway.

Asked my Canadian boss a few months ago what Boxing Day was, and he told me it was the day to box up all your unwanted gifts and return them. He's a notorious smartass and I'm pretty sure he was pulling my leg, but I'm abstaining from Googling it to maintain the day's sense of mystery and wonder.

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You know you've grown up when all you can think to say when asked repeatedly over a two month period for a Christmas list is "A percolator."

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Got it. The coffee from it is delicious.

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My sister drove up to town for the holiday. It's always cool-as-you-please to see her. She lives just down in Cincinnati, but still it seems like forever between her visits. For Christmas I gave her a framed print of the mannequin drinking the can of Coke. I lost the air pump for the mattress she sleeps on in the living room and had to put out $20 for a new one. It was either that or blow up a double air mattress all by me onesy, which would result in hyperventilation to the point of hallucination. On second thought... where's that receipt?

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Went skating with the bro' and his family at Dayton's Riverscape ice rink Christmas Day. Much fun was had by a couple of us. My brother got to skate for a few minutes before one of the blades fell clean off one of his 20+ year old Bauers. My littlest niece and nephew just couldn't quite skate, and the guards fearing injury and liability had to ask them to leave the ice. My sister-in-law and oldest niece, though, did a good job. So we skated while my brother watched longingly from the benches. I felt bad for him.

Someone asked me to take their group's picture, which is fortunate because I kind of have a knack for picture taking. I turned around and the guy said "Hey, Tim Horton's guy!" I said "Hey, regular customer guy!" Turns out a group of Tim Hortons regulars was there, including another person I knew, but not from Tim Hortons. Troy is about 20 miles from where we were. It's a small small world.

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If you notice a different tone to this from my usual effervescent bubbly optimism, it's because I have something weighing on my mind: Dark Haired Girl once said to me, "You know, Andy, your work is going to take you away from here." It's true. There isn't enough photographic work within 75 miles to constitute a sustainable income, and I don't want to be a full time industrial or fast food worker who takes pictures on the weekends. Sure, there's the McPortrait factories at Wal-Mart and Sears, but any trained monkey can do that stuff. I'm going to have to go where the work is. That's the root of why she and I hit the brakes after our relationship got a little too solid... it's easier for friends to move apart than significant others.

Being a social worker, Dark Haired Girl has even begun sending me links to photography job opps all over the country. It's a sad truth, but in the short- to mid-term future, I'm most likely going to have to move away. The thought of leaving Dark Haired Girl and her girls (to whom I've grown quite attached) scares me to death. With this nagging on my mind, I've been irritable and short-tempered lately.

I've been in a salty mood at work lately because of the Dark Haired Girl dilemma. I bend over backward to accomodate my customers, and I take it personally when people drive away displeased, but the other morning a customer was giving me attitude and pouting about something. Despite my best efforts otherwise (no matter what, it's tacky to be impolite to customers), she drove away unhappy and I wasn't sorry. In fact I rather enjoyed pissing her off.

I'm known around town as "That Nice Young Man at Tim Hortons", and I get recognized everywhere I go. It's not an act. I don't get paid enough for those kinds of theatrics. Making my customers happy genuinely makes me happy. That incident was highly uncharacteristic.

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My sister met Dark Haired Girl for the first time Christmas Eve. Christmas day, she was all my sis could talk about... what a sweetheart and how wonderful she was. I will never in my life find anybody else as perfect as her... sure, she has some road rage issues (for God's sake, Hell hath no fury as Dark Haired Girl cut off by an inattentive driver), but that's the sum total of all my complaints about her. Pretty short list. So here's my ultimate dilemma: love or true calling.

Honestly, there's no way I'm going to forsake the last two years of my life (and accumulated student loan debt therefrom) just to stay in the area, but neither can I stand the idea of leaving.

You can appreciate my current state of frustration.

"The secret to a rich life is to have more beginnings than endings."

-David Weinbaum

Well, I did it. Fall quarter drew to a close last night, marking the completion and conclusion of my education at the Ohio Institute of Photography and Technology.

Last night I entered my school building for the final time as a student, and exited an alumnus. Tried not to make a big deal about it or be all dramatic, but as I stepped out the door and down the steps to the parking lot, I was immediately washed over with a huge wave of realization. There was real gravity in the air. Suddenly my peripheral senses opened up, and the very same world that I'd been looking at through tunnel vision for the last two years began to unfold wide about me in all directions.

The entire paradigm of photography shifted completely upside down in a single instant. I realized the ridiculousness of all my previous worries about doing well enough. Now that I'm on the "other side", I can see clearly that now is my time to blossom, not while I was in school. How had that not been glaringly obvious to me, even merely a matter of minutes beforehand?

The warm-up is over; it's time to shine. I'd been worrying, expecially over this past year, about being a late bloomer, but all it took was to stepping out that door to tear the student blinders from my eyes. School was to learn the basic skills. Now is the time to combine them with my vision and ideas, and let the mix start reacting, bubbling, and fermenting into a heady brew.

Shakespeare wrote: "Why, then the world's mine oyster, Which I with sword will open."

Indeed.

Calling all deities...

Are you a praying person? Have you ever lain awake at night, kept awake by some nagging trouble, thinking so hard that you feel you must be sending out a silent spell into the dark? Good. I could use your services right now.

Please. For the love of God/Goddess/Allah/Buddha/Voodoo Marie Laveau/Whomever's sake, utter a simple incantation for me.

I just applied online to the Ohio State Highway Patrol for a civilian photography technician job. I have the chance to simultaneously serve both my passion for photography, and sense of duty to protect and serve my fellow mankind. This is my chance to finally become a productive member of our society, in humble service to the greater good, and sustain myself independently without parental or otherwise outside (day job at Tim Hortons) assistance.

I need all the karma I can get right now.

Exactly! Exactly!

So I'm seeing all these commercials on TV for Lexus and Lincoln and Mercedes peddling their automobiles as Christmas gifts. I don't know about you, but I simply can't fathom having enough money to buy somebody else a Lexus on a seasonal whim. Can't wrap my head around it. That's just an entirely different plane of reality.

You know what I got my mom for Christmas? A whisk.

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One of my heroes is Howard Schatz. I was introduced to his photography in an issue of LensWork magazine, and was instantly floored by how his work echoes my own philosophy. I look at his online portfolio and think (sometimes saying out loud) "Exactly! Exactly!", as if I'd been playing a game of Charades for the last two years to a crowd of blank faces, only for somebody to come along and finally comprehend what the hell I'm trying to express. Well, ok... I'm the one who happened upon his work, but you get my analogy.

I'm going to call his studio in NYC tomorrow and see if they take interns or temporary assistants. It's a million-to-one shot, but I'll never know if I don't try.

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Put up a profile on Model Mayhem. What can it hurt? I'm coming to a realization that my primary strength is the headshot, usually required by model and actor types. Not too many of those around here.

Dammit.

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Whatever happened to Amy Madigan? I loved her in Field of Dreams and Uncle Buck.

Lame Duck Session (plus addendum)

Well, folks, I finally did it. Today I turned in my final portfolio at school. The quarter goes on until right before Christmas, but my other classes are just electives. This was the final photography project at school I'll ever do. I've spent the last two years working up to this afternoon, and as I handed it over to my adviser, this bizarre feeling washed over me. It was part relief, part nausea. I felt like I'd just delivered a baby after a two year pregnancy. Since January 2006 I've been working toward and have had my laser sights set on one singluar long-term goal: Portfolio. That effort culminated in my submission today. My goal has been achieved. Mission accomplished. Stick a fork in me. I'm done.

Instantly, as the black aluminum case left my hands, I felt... lost.

What now?

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Ok, so I got the phone call this afternoon from my adviser: my portfolio passed. You need 15 pieces to get the "thumbs up" for the whole shmear to pass, and two of my seventeen didn't make it. One was a three panel series of the tree sculptor. That didn't surprise me... it was a rebellious risk taken on my part to demonstrate my commercial/editorial side. But the one of Brian posing in his hockey gear failed... that caught me off guard. Still, there's no ego bruising on this end. I broke multiple rules with that one, and they dinged me for it. Fuck it. I'm proud as hell of that shot, and nobody is going to convince me otherwise, dammit.

I rule, and you know it.

I passed, ergo, I graduate. Andy is happy, and fast on his way to an AAS in Photographic Technology, Majoring in General Applied Photography. Or, in layman's terms: "Jack of All Trades."

Flexibility. It's a beautiful thing in this miniscule local market.