Well it’s a brand new year, new decade, and a good time to reflect on the past year and come up with goals for the next one. I had the good fortune of spending New Years with my wife and some other folks in sunny Jamaica, on a work/pleasure trip. A friend of mine is developing some property in Jamaica into a resort/tourist attraction and he hired me to come down and do some video and photos of the progress. I went down 2 years ago, when he was just starting out, to do a video, and he wanted to update people on the progress. It was not a lot of work, and frankly spending some time (especially in the winter) in 85 degree weather was a treat. I shot some video of the construction going on, as well as people enjoying the mineral spring (a hole filled with water 35 feet under ground) that is the central attraction on his land. I also took a TON of pictures. While I bought the Canon 7D mainly for video, I am enjoying having a great stills camera and am getting back to shooting stills again, which I have always enjoyed. I am including some of my favorites from the trip here.
I am entering my fourth year of being freelance and am more excited than ever. Last year, which started out a little slow, and gave me a lot of concerns given the economic “crisis”, turned out to be a great year. I continued working for some old clients, and picked up a bunch of new ones. I got to work on a couple different documentary projects, shot a few music videos, and short films. I traveled a fair amount, taking over 25 flights, and god knows how many miles in a car. I started using some new technology, shooting video on DSLRs, while still embracing more conventional video tech. I embraced social media as a business tool and started using Twitter, through which I have made a lot of new friends and contacts, and even landed a couple jobs. I started my new website (thanks to Rob Baker) and started blogging. Professionally (and personally) it was a rewarding year.
I hope to continue this trend in 2010. I am hoping to make some more time for some personal projects, and also cultivate new partnerships with writers and directors. I would like to expand my work into some other avenues, maybe doing more commercials and tv projects, and further develop the documentary work that I have enjoyed so much. I hope to collaborate as much as possible and really push each project to be the best it can be.
I want to thank all the clients, colleagues, friends and family that have supported me in my professional ventures. I feel really blessed to have a job that I am so passionate about and working on projects that help to promote, raise awareness, entertain, or inspire. Happy New Year!
Tags: Canon 7D, director of photography, DSLR, freelance, photos, travel