Jesus Walk with Me

God show me the way because the Devil's tryin' to break me down
(Jesus Walks with me, with me, with me, with me, with me)

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Eyes Everywhere

New Year’s Day, 2011

My friends and I stepped down from the bus. The chilly clay crunched under my boots.

The air was hazy. Any illusion of clarity was dispelled when I raised my eyes to see the blacktop highway dissolve into a floating haze of humidity and moisture-bound truck exhaust.

My mind was also hazy. It was morning, and I had awoken only a few hours earlier from a few hours' sleep after being awake for the 56 hours prior. Long layovers though we had, I had not been able to sleep since taking off from Pensacola.

Sir went to a roadside snack shack to restock on Lay’s Tomato Tango, while those of us who had doubled down on morning tea sidled around the back of a shuttered garage to answer nature’s call.

Spike’s voice, always from the diaphragm, fired out from the far corner of the building.

“I’m having performance issues,” he muttered. “That monkey won’t stop watching me.”

I looked overhead and saw a cartload of monkeys spread out across the roof. A few observed our relief with academic disinterest, while one closest to me sat contemplating God’s good potato.

I laughed. Spike continued.

“I hate the monkeys. You should have seen them in Shimla. They’ll attack out of nowhere.”

At this, I sobered a tad and finished my business, one wary eye on the monkey troop.

We returned to a crowd around the bus. We were deep in Bihar, about as far off the tourist trail as we could be without swimming open water. Fresh faces, much less a rag tag gaggle of Americans, stood out in a little town like this. It seemed half the town had turned out to laugh at our sincere-yet-ham-handed attempts at pronunciation of “naya saal shayari.”

The bus’s interior was just as smoggy as the air outside. I adjusted my neckerchief back over my mouth and nose as I cleared the step into the bus.

Before ducking all the way inside the vehicle, I realized just how many faces, mostly kids, were watching us. I grabbed the rickety support bar in the bus door and leaned out to snap a few frames. The diversity of the expressions makes me smile every time.

So began my first full day in India.

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It's about the work.

I heard something good the other day.

"If you want to succeed at something, be obsessed by it."

I take comfort in that statement.

My work--photography, videography, content creation--is an obsession for me.

For the past four years, I have worked 40-60 hour work weeks, while also shooting weddings, friends' small businesses and personal creative projects after hours.

In short, I've followed the Gary Vaynerchuk approach of paying the bills with a 9-5, and building something for yourself 6-2.

Cool thing: it works.

I get up at 4:30am most mornings. I exercise. I work. I stay up late. I shoot. I edit. I follow up. I deliver.

I consume medically inadvisable amounts of caffeine and live a life booked edge to edge with work opportunities that create more work.

Alternatively, I could work a polite 40 hours a week, drink cocktails on Friday nights and laze around on Saturdays and Sundays, but that’s not really my style. To put it quite bluntly, it bores me.

This kind of lifestyle, that yields raised eyebrows and consistent remarks of “I don’t know how you do everything you do” and “you should take some time for yourself” is exactly the kind of life that gives me the most satisfaction.

Big breaks don't happen. Maybe it's a purely American sentiment, that classic trope of "waiting for your big break" or "waiting for things to change." It dovetails with more recent, social media-friendly ideas of "reaching out to the universe" or “sending out good vibes" to effect change.

No.

The universe is an ordered system of gas and carbon. It has no personality and trends a little more toward disorder every nanosecond.

Those expressions are a handy psychological trick to change your own attitude or mindset, and a positive mindset is integral to the process, but change comes from your work. And lots of it.

Good work creates opportunities for more good work. If you tell me that you want to effect a change in your life, and yet you’re always on Snapchat advising that you’re bored or drunk, I’m going to stop listening. You’re wasting your time.

If you have time to be at a dedicated “networking event” at 5:02pm on a Thursday, you’re probably not working hard enough.

There is an ownership deficit in culture right now. Your life is your life. What you make of it is on you.

What will define 2017 for myself and Annie?

This is the year we took ownership and pumped the brakes. After four years of employment with intense commitments of time and energy, first to fund our wedding and later to simply explore opportunities, we have decided to stop moving with the crowd, and we are building.

With the full support of the marketing team at Innisfree, I am stepping away from full-time, salaried employment and myself and Annie are launching our company.

Move Media is about to emerge from dormancy and experience a rebrand as a content production studio and marketing resource. Annie and I are making ourselves available and the response so far has been unanimously positive, and, frankly, overwhelming.

Camera and Flask will continue and will see some changes inside the coming month.

Annie is working on a number of exciting projects that are hers to tell when the time is right.

The Dark Horses Podcast returns this coming week and I’m lining up guests as we speak. It’s going to be awesome.

We’ve accomplished an incredible amount and made a lot of stuff look good as a sideline to salaried employment.

You’re about to see what kind of fireworks happen when we give it our full attention.

Wear shades.

Quit talking and do something. Balance is boredom. Status quo is the fast lane to a slow death. Get obsessed.

Pensacola Business Photography: OHWB Product Line

Old Hickory Whiskey Bar has launched their online store! Their lineup of tshirts are seriously on point, and we had a blast taking the product photos. Huge thanks to our modeling talent for coming out early on a Saturday morning to make these images happen.

Published: "Keeping at Bay" for The Local Palate

Published in The Local Palate: "Keeping at Bay"

My latest journalistic collaboration with T.S. Strickland.

 

On the outskirts of Apalachicola, Rodney Rich is one of a dying breed. Not just an oysterman, he is one of two people who still make the iconic tool of the oyster trade: 16-foot long oyster tongs.
Terry and I drove out and spent an afternoon with Rodney and the friends and family who work and spend their off hours with him at his workshop.

The oyster industry is hanging on by a thread on Florida's Lost Coast. Frightened overfishing in the wake of the BP oil spill, an altered water profile in the river that feeds the bay, and numerous other factors have contributed to lack of product and a concomitant lack of incentive for the next generation to pursue the profession.

The long-term effect on the area remains to be seen. As things stand now, an entire way of Florida life hangs by a thread. It is a privilege when I get a chance to help document Florida's remaining fishing culture.

TLP published the first four images and Terry's interview with Rodney in their November 2016 issue. I included a few outtakes in this post to add context to Rodney's incredibly photogenic working environment.