Heading out to photograph a 4th of July wedding in a couple hours, and pausing from the wedding prep checklist to think about the sheer simplicity of what each portrait/wedding/engagement/etc. client most wants.

We all want photographs that help us tell our stories. To keep us alive. To present us in a fair, but complimentary, moment. To preserve an experience and give us a tangible visual onto which we can later look back and reflect with appreciation and gratitude. To perhaps share the images with other friends, family and loved ones, allowing them, too, to feel a connection with our own personal experience.

Yesterday I shot a senior picture session in a Bloomington park, and the young woman’s mother told me how she’d waited patiently for our appointment (we had a challenging time finding openings), because she knew that not only did she want the photographs of her daughter, but that she wanted me to take the pictures. She saw that I honor each client with a sincere personal connection. That what the client wants — beautiful images — is exactly what I want to deliver. That I strive to let each client tell a personal story with their eyes.

My business means so much to me. As the years have gone on, and I’ve enjoyed photographing thousands of clients, I’m likely even more keenly aware than ever before the enormity of trust that’s involved in hiring a photographer. Akin to hiring a writer to pen your autobiography, in a way, I suppose. Working in tandem to tell a visual story, one side of the camera anonymous and helpful, while the other side — the illustrated side — shines.

May and June have been an onslaught of celebratory, joyous, forward-looking photography sessions.

I love feeling the powerful optimism of high school and college graduates.

Cheers.

We all need to unplug the news, full-stop, and, instead, plug in to those who see the future as a series of exciting opportunities. Rather than be pulled downward into chaos and fear, we’re undeniably better served to allow ourselves to jump upwards into confident, mindful and helpful action.

This coming weekend I’m photographing a professional headshot (for career advancement), a senior picture session (to celebrate four wonderful years at Indiana University), a proposal/engagement (to celebrate life and love), and a going-off-to-military-service portrait session, to honor love of family, country and honor. This coming week I have two more weddings to photograph, in addition to fascinating work for two corporate clients. I’m not sure it’s possible to be a luckier guy. I, in turn, am obligated to give back to those who trust in me with gorgeous, timeless, meaningful images that will honor the sacrifices, decisions and hopes of each client. It’s a perfect partnership — trust and hope from clients married into hard work and commitment from me. I will absolutely do whatever it takes to ensure we get brilliant pictures, client-by-client-by-client….. It’s who I am as a person, and what I am as a professional.

there is beauty

there is joy

there is gratitude and graciousness and appreciation

there is love of life. love of moment. love of circumstance

there is fulfillment and contentment

there is so very much to embrace. it’s outside our doors, though, paradoxically, inside each of us.

While this is a year that everyone who lived it will remember for the rest of their life, it’s also a year that everyone who lived it will remember for the rest of their life.

In spite of the negatives that dominate media coverage, there are also 2020 births, 2020 weddings, 2020 graduations, 2020 promotions, 2020 exciting new relocations, 2020 personal and professional achievements, 2020 records being set each day (two different friends of our son set new world records this month, for instance), 2020 engagements, 2020 goals being attained and 2020 rewarding hobbies being pursued with more purpose, to name a handful.

I’m proud of the folks I’ve photographed this spring. They’re resilient. Positive. They’re looking ahead. They focus on what they can control, rather than worrying about what they can’t.

Two ways to look at 2020, it’s true. Equally, it’s true that this, too, shall pass…. What will unfold, as has always been the case, is that the spirit of possibility will rise to the forefront. We need positive, vibrant, optimistic minds. I love meeting them, working with them, and helping to share, visually, their stories.

…..as for me, I choose to create, share, value and appreciate simple beauty.

Good folks are at every turn in the Midwest.

I smile and feel deep peace being among these people.

Six years in business full-time on Bloomington’s iconic Courthouse Square and I’m going to pause, take a deep breath, look forward to a vibrant summer, and say “Thank You” for the cascade of blessings in my life.

May has been a fascinating month. There are so many levels and differences of emotions and outlooks throughout town/state/country/world.

Some see the proverbial glass half-empty. Some see it half-full. Some celebrate the positives. Others complain, worry or feel anger, seeing instead the negatives.

I’ve said countless times that I’ve got the best career imaginable. I see people on some of the best days of their lives — weddings, engagements, senior pictures, graduation ceremonies, newborn babies, headshots for the start of new careers, etc.

Through my eyes and ears (thus, lens), the sights and sounds of love, laughter, healthy pride, hope and a sense of hard-earned accomplishment are the strongest feedback I feel each day. There exists the counter, but the force of genuine positivity and optimistic outlooks define these resilient, determined people. I’m so proud to be surrounded with Hoosiers.

Everyone loves Bloomington.

Each year it’s bittersweet to see the seniors one last time in May, as we stroll the campus and create images at some of their favorite spots. There’s always a mixture of tears and smiles, as they’re shocked by how quickly the four years passed by. I vividly remember getting in my car to drive out of Bloomington, myself, upon graduating years ago. I didn’t even make it out of town when I suddenly pulled over to take one more solitary walk — and take one last photograph — before getting back in my car and heading to my new career, my first full-time job, in Chicago.

Years later I returned to Bloomington to live and work, and by some simple twist of fate now have a photography studio at exactly the parking spot where I’d pulled over to say “Goodbye” to B-Town decades earlier….

The tide goes out. The tide comes in.

We never know what the future may bring. Sometimes it’s extraordinary.

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

Confucius