"This is my corn. You people are guests in my corn!"

Today has been a day of several breakthroughs, the first of which is my given career, professional portrait photography.  Today is the first day that the balance between "fun" and "nervous" tipped toward the fun side. I had an epiphany of sorts last night sifting through portrait photographer's websites. The realization was that I don't have to rely on the same old shots time after time after time. Since becoming a scheduled photographer, I've been kinda relying on the same straight-and-narrow set of "blue chip" poses to solidify my embryonic skills. This has given rise to a sense of burn-out at the ripe old age (with the company) of a month and a half. Not good.

So last night, encouraged by the diverse portraiture conjured by Google, I decided to "let it all hang out", so to speak. My sessions today were the most relaxed, fun, diverse, and just plain great portraiture I think I've ever taken. I'm so damned proud of the photos I took today I could burst, and I think the customers will be beside themselves when they come in for the previews.

Our cameras are tethered to computers, so our images are beamed to monitors on the walls as we take them. There's no greater pat on the back than to watch parents get choked up and teary-eyed as their children's portraits appear, one by one as we take them, on the monitors. I've seen Harley-Davidson riding fathers totally lose it when they see our portraits of their kid come up on screen.

I love working for this company. :-)

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The second revelation came tonight as I stopped at the C.H. after work. Remember the place I'd referenced in an earlier post as to where I'd played Beer Pong? It closed last week. I found this out from the C.H. bartender. I regard this as a message from the Primal Forces of Nature every bit as important as the voice that told Kevin Costner to build a baseball diamond in his Iowa corn field. This is a valid point. Hear me out:

Ok... so I, in the eleventh hour of my twenties, finally get to play this game called Beer Pong. Beer Pong is evidently is as ubiquitous and universal among America's 18-25 year old demographic as PlayStation, that Ryan Seacrest guy, and "green" product marketing... yet somehow I managed to miss out entirely on the concept of this rite of passage from boy to manhood. That is, until I nearly was no longer a "youth", but rather was fast on the road to becoming a burgeoning thirtysomething yuppie. Then I was handed (quite randomly) the opportunity to partake of this phenomenon at O'Feenies.

Then O'Feenie's shuts down.

Beer Pong is something that I, in my daily comings and goings, will most likely never encounter. Can't you almost hear Kevin Costner's voice* whispering God-like out of the ether... "If you play it, it will come!"

If I play this idiotic and childish (yet strangely fun) game, and get that "boy-to-man" nonsensical bullshit out of my system, a greater perception of adulthood will come. In short, I'll grow up a bit. Then, just as soon as The Voice vanished from Ray Kinsella, so too did the O'Feenie's, the vehicle of my personal Cosmic lesson.

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*Kevin Costner did indeed play "The Voice" in the movie Field of Dreams. This gives rise to an interesting point: The voice was himself. Himself. Entirely from within his own little head, just as my (only slightly less) tear-jerking conclusion was. Hmmmmmmmmmm...