[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_single_image image=”25282″ border_color=”grey” img_link_target=”_self” img_size=”large”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]December 2008. It had been a year since I left school. I went to an eyebrow threading place and the lady made my eyebrows super freaking thin. I still have reservations about threading today.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
I was thinking the other day, while hanging out in my 8-ball PJs, if I am too old for clubs now. I’m almost 29, and I certainly still love dancing. I dunno. There’s always a blurry line where you’re stepping from one stage of life into another. This photo was taken at a Paul Van Dyk concert years ago. Actually, I’m most proud of it because I took it with a sony cybershot, and not an SLR.
I’ve successfully filled my life up with a long todo list. Last night I got to bed at 10:30pm for the first time in god knows how long. It’s not really a complaint that I\’m too busy,but an observation that I have been skipping out on sleep that I need.
When I woke up this morning I felt like a new person. I have been more productive and felt better about the product of my work today. Ironically, I had been delivered this article from Zen Habits just days prior. He makes two points about sleep that I found to be completely true.
Yes. Yes I do, and yes it does.
The same is true of exercise. As soon as I sacrifice exercise and sleep for what I believe is in exchange for increased productivity in both my technical career and my creative one, I lose. I’ve already lost the moment I go home instead of to the gym or decide to keep working once the clock strikes 10.
The biggest struggle in my life is not knowing what the right thing to do is. I almost always know what to do to improve my situation. My biggest struggle is to simply do those things. Whenever I hear the verse “the truth shall set you free†I think it’s not a universal truth. Shedding the shackles of laziness, habit, and stubbornness would really help set me free. The truth is, I need sleep. The truth is also that I will browse tumblr for an additional 45 minutes after bedtime. I use Any.Do to keep track of my tasks but I think I will attempt to implement the Eisenhower Decision Matrix to help me do a better job of choosing important over urgent when working and scheduling rest. I never thought I’d see the day I had to schedule in rest but here I am. Is this part of getting old and approaching your thirties?
As for sleep, I need 8-9 hours a night to feel good the next morning. At least 7 of them need to be uninterrupted. I\’m going to try to get ample sleep again, this week. I don’t have any weddings, just smaller gigs like engagements and parties, for another two months and I only have one major development project outside of my 9-5 this week. I can focus on improving my sleep health, without too many distractions.
Wish me luck (and perseverance).
I was visiting Jacksonville, Florida in 2008 when I managed to get up for sunrise and grab a photo of the sandpipers on the beach. I’ll probably always love the challenges of photographing people but the opportunity to photograph nature scenes brings me a sense of peace I haven’t been able to replicate shooting anything else.
Anyone who knows me, knows I love the aquarium. The biodiversity presented to you all at once makes you thankful to have been born in this era. I really enjoyed photographing animals I will only see a few times in my life. It was also a challenge to shoot through the plexiglass or whatever they use on the displays. I’ve gotten pretty darn good at shooting through both flat and curved glass, if I do say so myself. Here’s a few of my favorite shots from our visit to the Tennessee Aquarium, which although smaller than the Georgia Aquarium, is in my humble opinion, way better than the Georgia Aquarium.
Our friends Sam and Val had told us about a migration that happens every winter up in Tennessee last year, and this year Jeremy and I decided to join them. We set out early morning and drove about 3 hours north of here. I was geeking out about the sunrise, much to the amusement of everyone in the car. Yes, I’m that lazy that I never see a sunrise.
Whenever I do engagement sessions, I ask the couple to get up really early. I usually feel bad about it but the natural light that presents itself is worth losing the couple hours of sleep over. These horses just glowed in this light. And I took this photo while we drove by in a car. That’s how great morning light is!
Unfortunately once we arrive to the pier where the boat tour would have taken off, we were informed that the ice was too thick to break through and that the boat wouldn’t be going anywhere.
NOOOO. As a southerner I hadn’t even considered that there would be thick ice much less ice so thick it meant we went nowhere.
Two good things happened though. One, I got to play with three inches of ice. Two, we met this sweet old country dog named Bear who stopped in for pets and backscratches ( and a portrait! ).
We chose to drive around instead and we found ourselves with much closer experiences with the Sandhill cranes than we expected (or would have gotten on that day cruise). They were strewn across fields, scattered among cows, and flying overhead every few minutes.
And then we hit the motherlode of bird congregation. We had spotted them while passing over this bridge earlier in the day. Parking off to the left side of the bridge, we hoofed it to the middle and I was granted the opportunity to shoot these!
Just look how many there are!
It was totally worth the disappointment and detour. And I caught a Bald Eagle in flight.. our national bird!
Have you sensed that I have been perusing my New York City photos again? I’ve got the itch to go visit. Bad. I want to spend an entire week there, like we did in St Louis, and soak up as much of the Big Apple as I can. This photo is from 2009, when my family and I went to the Poconos and stopped in NYC for just a day and a half.
Guys, I gotta go back.
This photo was taken in 2008, when we went up into the North Georgia mountains with my family. The lake was more of a retaining pond but the reflections were so pretty! This weekend, Jeremy and I are heading back up through the mountains with our friends Val and Sam to check out the Hiwassee refuge and the local wildlife. Steve, a friend at work, loaned me his 300mm L series lens along with Canon’s 1.4x extender. This girl is excited. :) 
Yes, that’s Atlanta this morning. As of 8am today some people were still on the roads. My facebook feed is still full of abandoned people all around 285 that can’t get home. My facebook feed is also full of people looking for their friends and family and some folks wondering how to get home when their car had to be abandoned.
In the decades I’ve lived in GA it has never ever been this bad. My dad was trying to come home from work early to avoid the snow. He was stuck out there so long, he eventually had to make a couple of fairly dangerous maneuvers to get to my cousin’s house and stayed there. Usually, once it starts snowing, people leave work early and make it home. The odd man on the streets at night gets caught in the ice but usually it doesn’t impact the city this much. This time everything from tractor trailers to school buses and everyone trying to get home got caught in the speedily iced roads. Because we have such high traffic roads, the salt and sand that did get put down was only effective for a couple hours and the trucks were not able to make a second or third pass on the roads because traffic got so bad so fast. We just didn’t have enough preparation and prevention, from either the goverment, or as individual citizens.
We know that next winter, and even for the rest of this one, Jeremy and I will have blankets, water, and some dry food in the trunks of our cars just in case we do get stuck. Even chains for our wheels. I have my doubts about how well prepared we will be next time as a city. I certainly didn’t expect as much snow as we got, or the rate of ice just based on the weather forecast for the day.
So far no deaths have been reported, and I am glad for at least that small miracle for our city.