I’ve been fortunate that my career has taken me to many interesting places across the US, Europe and even India and Japan. I’ve almost always had a camera with me, even long before we all had several in our hand every waking moment. In the early days of film, it was challenging to ensure I arrived back home with my lead-lined bag full of undeveloped film rolls.

The digital evolution removed some of the hassles of film, but early digital cameras were low resolution and really ran through batteries. When affordable DSLR cameras started to emerge in the early 2000’s, things really changed with higher megapixel sensors, new digital features, and better battery life.

Last year I went back through my huge folders full of travel photos and videos and placed many up on Google Maps. These nearly 650 images have now been viewed over 2 million times. It truly warms my heart that I can contribute to the experiences of others. I’m now on a mission to document everywhere I go that has a reasonably interesting visual story and make it to the next level of Google Local Guide.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned before that I do photo restoration work. It’s not that I go out and advertise this as as a service. I just have a few businesses that do document scanning who send clients my way.

I love hearing the back story behind the photo, and am heart wrenched to hear how the photo came to be in it’s damaged state.

Do I make any money at this? No. Is it exciting. Far from it. But it is highly rewarding when you show the finished reproduction to the client who has cherished this memory and thought the print was gone for good.

November was all about fixing up the new suite after the previous tenants have finally moved their stuff out. I mentioned that those tenants were a construction company, so they had sample cabinetry all over the place. Well, they had set those cabinets before redoing the floor, so that flooring all had to be repaired. Because these planks are staggered, it takes twice as much new flooring as the missing sections.

Luckily, I was able to source the same matching flooring, and began got to work I’m not a flooring expert nor do I play one on TV, so I had to YouTube some videos on how to patch vinyl flooring and got started. I didn’t do a perfect job, and there is still one section I haven’t finished, but in a few weeks the floors were looking much better.

And there was plenty of drywall to repair too. Not only the usual holes from cabinet mounting, but larger holes from cable runs, and sloppy granite installers that felt it was better to punch big holes in the wall than to trim the slab to properly fit. The wall are all knock-down textured so these larger patches had me trying my hand at that for the first time. Again, I didn’t do a perfect job, but no one but me seems to notice.

Denise is the one who likes to paint so after all the patching and molding was completed, she went to work making it all look great. Luckily we were able to perfectly match the wall color, so we didn’t have to repaint whole walls.

The front room, training room and spa room were all finally coming together by the end of November. Denise was able to start performing Raindrop treatments, and on December 11th, we hosted our spiritual center’s Sunday Service in-person as well as streaming on Zoom and Facebook Live. I’ve held Photographers Workshops, Denise has hosted some workshops herself, and I’m working to ramp up the training part of the business. Everyone who’s come by has complimented how the place looks and the positive energy.

Meanwhile, I also had to get the studio into some sort of shape so I could resume work there. If you remember the “LEGO Wall” from the old studio, well, of course I brought that to the new space, bought some additional blocks (still not quite enough) and started to separate the studio from the warehouse and shop areas.

And there was the strange case of the new outdoor signage. I designed and ordered signs which looked great, but I didn’t screw heads showing. I wanted to use French cleats like I did with the stainless steal sign I had at the old place. Well, the French cleats were aluminum and the signs backing had this heavy vinyl coating. I tried several different adhesives before I was able to find a mounting solution. Now I know how many different industrial adhesives that will not bond to vinyl.

There’s still a lot to be done to make the new studio into the clean, inviting, and highly functional workspace I want it to be, but I’ll keep sharing as the work continues. Right now it’s fully functional and I’ve been shooting again. It feels great to be getting back to the photography that I love.

I left off in the last entry that I had loaded up the studio with all kinds of belongings. By May it was a warehouse of bins, boxes, half packed photo gear, etc. Quite the mess, but the plan was that by the end of June, we’d be moving around the corner to the new location. The only thing we were able to do was carve out a small room so that Denise could continue to offer her aromatherapy spa sessions.

Makeshift Spa Room

While the rest of the studio is now a warehouse, I carved out this small space as Denis’ spa room. At least she can continue to work her business while we wait.

June came and went and no word from the tenants that were supposed to vacate our new suite. Come to find out, they were building out a new location and the work was taking longer than expected, so they extended their lease a month.

And I found out that there were other discussions with other building tenants that were also interested in the suite, so now began a series of discussions between the building owner and three tenant business owners. There was a lot of miscommunications, non-communications, some trying to go behind the backs of others for an advantage, etc. July was not a fun month. I’m having to turn away business that required a functional studio. July turned into August. Mid August we all finally decided among all the stakeholders who was going to move where so now just waiting for the new suite to become available to start the move.

September 1, the vacating business finally began moving out. But they didn’t take everything. In all the discussions, they thought that one of the other businesses wanted to buy some of the materials and furnishings, so they just left them in the suite. Tired of all this, I started moving boxes and bins - as much as I could without the other stuff being moved out. I had to get the landlord engaged again as I was paying for this new suite now but unable to complete the move.

The vacating business was a construction contractor, so they had many sample cabinets in the front room and another office. Those had been left behind for one of the other contractors in the building, who now had to figure out how to remove and store all of this. There were heavy duty shelves of construction materials too, and a broken pallet jack. Confused? Trust me, the whole thing was a nightmare.

This large hutch occupied one wall of what we will convert to a multi-purpose room.

And another wall was adorned with sample cabinets

Forward now to October 31th, when all of the material is finally removed from our new suite, and I’ve moved all of my material and equipment over. I want to thank our friends who came out and helped us move the last loads of heavy gear. Sounds like this story is done, right. Well, not exactly. Next week I’ll share some of the work we did to begin the build-out. Stay tuned.