Together in Pensacola, FL: The Edwards Family

Cooler weather in Pensacola means family portrait season. And one of my favorite families to capture is the Edwards/Tipton/(soon to be) Coker clan. Long-term followers of my progress will recognize Karena as a multi-trip compatriot in trips to India, and her daughter and son-in-law Brittney and Brandon from their beautiful beach wedding that I photographed two years ago, as well as their daughter Piper, whom I photographed last Christmas.

When discussing what they might want to do for their family portraits this year, Annie threw out the idea of a paint fight. With a slight alteration to colored chalk, we stuck with that idea and ended up with some incredibly fun shots. This is how you do it, folks. Matching outfits on the beach will get the job done, but if you plan to block out an afternoon to get the whole family together for photos, do something unique!

AND

Courtesy of my lovely wife, a behind the scenes video of the shoot in progress.

Doin' the work...in the sky!

Yours truly, doing my thing in a small airplane over Alabama yesterday.  I tagged along with my buddy Sheldon when he went up to shoot some air-to-air video aviation footage for a project he's currently working on. The inflation of my shirt is due to the absence of a door on my side of the airplane.  Yep, you heard me correctly.  We don't mess around.  Big thanks to Sheldon for grabbing a few [awesome] shots of me while we were up in the air.

Warrior Dash and the joy of common purpose.

In retrospect, I regret having spent so much of my life in solitary pursuits.  It's simply my personality that I do my best work and think most clearly when I work alone, but I regret having allowed the desire to "work better" to infiltrate everything that I do.  I don't believe in doing anything halfway, so it just never made sense to allow myself to be hindered or distracted.  I love to meet with people for lunch, coffees or dinner, just to pass the time and enjoy simple conversations, but environments where my work is dependent on another person's involvement have always been frustrating to me.  As such, I've always been one to drive alone, work alone, and often play alone.  It's not good to spend so much time inside your own head. Over the past few years, I've been reminded of how wonderful it can be to spend time with people for a common purpose.  India, certainly has given me multiple experiences of pure, unadulterated joy at what I have seen and assisted in accomplishing when working with a group of people for a common purpose.  I also experienced it more recently in my excursion with my friend Jeff to Warrior Dash.

Warrior Dash is a 5K obstacle course.  It has whetted my appetite for bigger things...like Tough Mudder.  I can't wait.