How to get this look?

Only the title changes but the questions remain the same :)

See part one here :)

Growth

The purpose of this post is to remind myself that this journey is one of self-discovery. If you don't acknowledge the self-discovery in the journey, you're seriously short-changing yourself.

Seriously. Short-changing. Yourself.

The harder the endeavor. The more you'll learn about yourself. The flip-side is you'll never learn anything about yourself doing anything easy. Doing the same mundane routine over and over again yields zero, and I repeat z-e-r-o gains in the self-discovery department. Hell, it probably yields zero gains in any department.

Who cares about self-discovery?

Well, I do. And you should too if you value personal growth. But if not, feel free to stop reading here. I'll help you by breaking this blog post up here and forcing you to click "more" if you want to proceed :)

Resilience

This past weekend in Las Vegas I fielded many questions about the business aspects behind photography. So much so that I didn't have nearly enough time to discuss all the elements of fashion editorial shoots. With that said however, I'd rather address the issues of the masses rather than force-feed topics that may not get as much interest. So I happily obliged in talking shop.

The nature of the business-related questions that I answered in Las Vegas stemmed from an overall curiosity of doing photography for a living. I found several photographers asking, "Are you making enough to survive comfortably?" and "Is photography a potentially viable business?" and "Is this a sustainable means of earning a living?"

My answer (in the workshop) was firstly, yes. But that you'd have to be able to endure the ugliness of entrepreneurship to survive and those tests determines one's success. Upon more thought, I've boiled it down to simpler terms:

I'm here... still recovering from LV

Pretty much says it all, I'm still digesting all the events and definitely all the pictures that we took at the castle :)

All in due time!

Impress Me

I get lots of messages/emails/etc. so here's a short list (though not exhaustive) list of things that impress me when I receive a message:

1. When you address me by my name e.g. Dear Charles, Dear Mr. Lucima, etc. You get docked points for just writing, "Hi," and then going into your message. Wanna know why? Because that screams "I don't know or care what your name is and I copied and pasted this entire message including the header from another message"

2. Big bonus points for knowing my real last name. But not longer since I am publicly announcing this here.

3. Proper grammar and spelling. I pride myself on my edumacashun and beeing abel to spel gud.

Can't believe I'm going to Vegas in 2 days...

Admittedly I haven't finished my presentations. I plan on finishing them up tomorrow though.

We're sitting 2 days out from Las Vegas.

Part of the reason I've been delaying the end of the presentation is because there are lots of little things happening lately. I've been testing again which is nice since I hadn't been testing for over a month or so.

One of the main reasons I've been delaying the presentations is because I feel like a lot of ideas have come together that needed time to brew in the pot before I put them together in the presentation. I have a much different (probably matured) take on shooting fashion/editorial than I did before and those experiences needed time to cook before consumption.

Overall I'm really excited. Things will really ramp up quickly tomorrow and Friday and by the time Saturday hits we'll be running full stride. Everything's in motion and tomorrow we'll solidify the remaining moving pieces. Hope to document the entire event with pictures and some video.

Weather looks to cooperate with us. It'll be nearly 90's in Las Vegas this weekend.

Imagine that :)

More Vegas Preview! :)

As promised ;)