I find I automatically go to take certain shots when I know they won’t be interesting.  Sometimes I don’t even look in the viewfinder.  I just snap a photo.  It’s like I have to get the bad shots out of my system before I start to experiment and take the photos I really want to take.  It helps sometimes to see that bad photo then make adjustments from there.  Maybe it’s habit, I’m not sure.  My goal though is to move away from that and start going for the good shots first and training my eye to know what those will be.

I took over 100 photos for this shoot and cut it down to the 5 here in this post.  I’m still in that habit of taking photos I know won’t work, but I think it helped push my creativity further.

The post Finding beauty in every day things. appeared first on Bordering Beyond.

My goal recently has been to shift towards a career in photography.  I’ve made a few half hearted attempts these past few months at getting hired with a company just so I could do more.  More photos, more editing, more of everything.  I just want people in front of my camera so I can experiment and push myself to learn more and get better.

“Why do you want to work for us?”

I said I just want to take pictures.  I want to tell stories.  Capture little emotions.  For the love of it.  Give me an excuse to take more photographs.

I immediately regretted telling the interviewer those things because I thought she might think I was selfish.  Selfish for expressing the desire to fulfill my own need and want to take more photos and explore and create.  After, I thought I should have told them something like I wanted to showcase a couples love, or something like that.  That’s what they really want to hear.

And then I got the phone call.  They said they were excited to bring me on board.  They loved my work.  Now here’s some paperwork to make it all official.

I am officially hired as a wedding photographer with George Street Photo.

The post A step in the right direction appeared first on Bordering Beyond.

http://matadornetwork.com/life/this-is-my-city-philadelphia/

My photo essay about Philadelphia was published on Matador Network.  I would say I’m excited, but it feels more surreal than anything.  Surreal, because the managing editor approached me about it, not the other way around.  How’d I get so lucky?

The post So, this happened… appeared first on Bordering Beyond.

Originally, I only included the photos themselves.  The text was an after thought when I was trying ways to make the photo “pop” more.  I’m currently in love with the League Gothic font, so I use it any change I get.  I think it works.

When I posted it, someone commented on my facebook page that it looked like a postcard, so I was inspired to create more.

I think this style of photos definitely fits my personality and artistic style, so I’m working on creating more and letting this style shine through with the redesign of my site over the next few months.

I never imagined experimenting with photo collages would actually lead to a design style I love.  What a happy accident.

The post A Happy Accident appeared first on Bordering Beyond.

Note: I wouldn’t recommend attempting to cross the Benjamin Franklin bridge by foot in the middle of a windy and snowy February day, but I wasn’t thinking that when I did it.  Had I known how horrible it was going to be, I would have never gone.  In any case, I did go, so here’s some photos I managed to get when I wasn’t too distracted by the cold or the thought of being blown off the bridge by the wind.

It was pretty surprising how close the pedestrian walkway was to the overhead signs. As the path continued forward, I passed the maintenance entrance to the bridge aove the signs, blocked off by merely a simple gate.

One of the interesting things about this bridge, is that you get a closer look at some of the older buildings in the city first built on the waterfront.

You can see where old buildings were built upon and new pieces added, or where old buildings still remain, resulting in a mish-mash of architectural styles as the city grew over time.

Around the corner form the parking lot on the right, just blocks from this major highway, is the city’s oldest street. Elfreth’s Alley.

This bridge is a major channel for travel between Philadelphia and New Jersey. Below and to the right of the pedestrian walkway are tracks for regional trains. The bridge vibrates just a little bit more every time one goes by.

It was about 20 degrees fahrenheit with big gusts of wind, but I still saw a handful of runners jogging up and down the bridge.

This is when it started to get a little bit scary. The wind was much stronger here because of the height, and the bridge wiggled even more with the traffic.

This barrier was one of the beams for the bridge and only about four feet high. I was kneeling for this shot because I was afraid the wind would blow me over the barrier and onto the road below.

At this point, the wind and cold were really getting to be too much for me. Even if something terrible happened, my hands were useless to grab anything because they were numb with the cold. I turned quickly to get this shot of the city and go back down the bridge.

About 1/4 of the bridge left to go from here.

The home stretch. I felt much better being back at the entry point for the bridge. Right after I took this photo, I stuffed my camera back in my bag and walked as fast as I could to get back home and get warm again.

The post Going Anyways: Braving Wind and Cold on the Ben Franklin Bridge appeared first on Bordering Beyond.

I still wanted to take photos, so I resolved to trek out to the Benjamin Franklin bridge and document one of the major entry points of Philadelphia.  Ten minutes after I walked outside, my fingers ached from the cold and the beautiful nearly cloudless sky washed over in a bleak and dusty grey.  And the wind nearly blew me over!

Finally warm and back at home, I opened the new light kit my fiance bought.  Then I realized I have absolutely no idea how to set anything up and no room to put anything even if I did figure it out.

Sometimes, things don’t go as planned.

In the meantime, here’s a photo from something that did.  My new glasses arrived after two weeks of having broken ones.  Happy weekend, everyone!

p.s. one of my cats jumped into the frame right as I was about to snap a pic.  Also not planned, but its a decent photo, so I guess everything works out in some way or another.

The post Sometimes Things Don’t Go As Planned. appeared first on Bordering Beyond.

I see the chain start to crackle and smoke.  The sound makes it feel like a thousand tiny fists punching my insides.  My ears ring and my body feels like it is vibrating with each pop.  I begin to reconsider standing in the front of the crowd, but with a hundred people standing behind me, there is nowhere to go.

The dragons dance and weave through the smoke as the chain explodes, and I take another step forward.  Now, I taste sulfur from the smoke.  It coats my mouth.  When I lower my camera to register the taste, I feel a firecracker casing hit my left cheek and then another on my forehead.  I could feel my heart now pounding in my throat as the chain continued to shorten and burn towards the large, football sized cluster rigged together.

I’m pelted with another shower of firecracker casings and smoke.  My whole body shook as it exploded, and instead of hearing it, it felt like someone was punching my head inside and out at the same time.  In that split second of a moment I felt time slow down just long enough to think to myself “Oh my god, what am I doing?”

It was at least 10 seconds before I realized I was holding my breath and my body was shaking as the last puff of smoke entered the air.  And in the moment when my thinking cleared, I turned around and pushed my way out of the crowd.

That one terrifying moment fueled an adrenaline rush.  I had to be part of the action.  As the parade continued down the street, I pushed my way to the front, seeing how close I could get to the exploding pellets.  I danced in the swirling smoke like a kid playing in a fountain in the summer.  I breathed the sulfur in the air and giggled when another pellet hit my face.  Firecracker ash settled in my hair.  Why was everyone moving so slow around me?  Didn’t they feel it too?

In that moment, pushed to the edge, I felt life bursting inside me.  I was fearless.

***

I gathered my breath and moved to leave the closeness and chaos of Chinatown behind me.  Finally, my body registered the effects of standing in the cold for half a day with no food.  My feet were clumsy and I began to register a pain in my back from standing and walking too long.  The adrenaline was wearing off.  My body felt colder as I walked, but I had just enough energy to make it to my block and climb the two flights of stairs to my apartment.  Home.  I dumped my camera bag on the couch wandered to my bed where I immediately fell asleep.

The post Dancing With Dragons: One Terrifying Moment Turned Blissed Out Adrenaline Rush appeared first on Bordering Beyond.

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I’d like to say that I was just that good, that I was a natural, but I wasn’t, really.  In fact, my first year as a teacher totally sucked.  I was terrible.  I got hired that day because of my confidence and attitude that I could do it.  I remember giving myself a pep talk just before the interview and audition process.  ”You are a teacher.  Now act like it.”

Had I gone into that audition with the attitude that maybe I could do it, I probably would have failed.  As Yoda would say, “Do or do not, there is no try.”

An photo taken at Longwood gardens. I spent a day there wandering the grounds and exploring my thoughts about being a professional photographer.

I’m a big believer in just jumping straight in.  You want to be a teacher, start acting like a teacher to make that become a reality.  You want to be a film maker, start acting like you already are one.  Most of the time I feel like people wait around for others to tell them that they are allowed to do what they want to do.  We wait for others to give us permission, when the only person who can give us that is ourselves.

Obviously, certain paths require degrees or other certifications, but probably much less then you might think.  There’s a narrative out there that you have all of these insurmountable obstacles to overcome and schooling and debt you have to accrue, when most of the time, you don’t need any of it at all.  Fuck that noise.  I was hired as a teacher before I finished the official schooling for it.

There are plenty of people out there doing amazing things without having gone through the “official” path to get there.  How many authors went to school to learn how to write a book?  Much less than the amount of them who just sat down and wrote.  I’ll save you the list of famous people who dropped out of school and went on to accomplish great things, because my point is this: no matter what it is, you can do something today to get where you want to be, whether that be reaching out to people, raising funds, or my personal favorite, just doing that thing you want to do.

The more I wandered the grounds taking photos, the more I felt at peace and completely in tune with myself.

Today, even though I’m currently working as an elementary music teacher, I’m now working towards my next career.  A professional travel and lifestyle photographer.  Because it occurred to me that day I got hired, solely on the confidence and belief that I was already a teacher, that I had to stop waiting for permission to pursue what I really wanted to do.

Until recently, I had been politely ignoring all of the thoughts that surfaced surrounding pursuing photography as a career.  It took me a long time to be honest with myself.  I don’t want to teach music, I want to take photos.  Every day I go to work then come home and spend every spare minute taking photos, editing photos, doing exercises to improve my skills, reading about travel and photography, and so on.  I’m the unofficial official photographer for my family and friends, so much so that they started paying me to do it.  All of it happened because I started positioning myself as already being a photographer.

Now I have strangers and other people asking to see more of my work, asking to pay me to do something I love.  The more I shift my attitude and align myself with being a photographer instead of hoping to be a photographer, the better I get.  And, more importantly, the more other people see me as a photographer, too.  I’m making my dream a reality by simply doing.

I don’t know how it will turn out or what direction it will take, but it’s where my heart is.  And I’m giving it all I’ve got.

The post How I Faked My Way Into My Current Job, And Other Thoughts On Pursuing Your Dreams appeared first on Bordering Beyond.

Here’s what I found in my exploration:

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