How did we spend our summer?  June and July were even more crazy busy as this whole transition began to grow legs.

I like how the golden hour light reflects off this stainless steel sign at the new studio.

June was all about three things:  1) At work, finding and grooming my replacement and 2) at home, preparing the house to put on the market.  On a photog's income I know I can't continue to live in this big house and it's way too much for us anyway.  3) At the end of the month I found that commercial studio space I was looking for (well, not exactly what I had envisioned but something I can make work.)

Ryan and Beau helped me with this "floating" crown molding so I can move these backdrop panels around in the small portrait studio space.

July was another crazy month.  I scrambled to get the house on the market (yea, I missed the spring selling season - that will cost me) and I moved all of my photo studio and art studio over to the new commercial space.  My house was ready to show by the middle of the month, and I had to work hard to begin to get the new space ready to use.  We shot just one boudoir client using make-shift pop-up backdrops, an air-bed, and a lot of patience on our client's part.  At least she liked the final product.  She bought a large print to hang in her fiance's man-cave and their wedding is today where she presents him with the album I made for her.  Can't wait to hear how he liked that.

And, we have a trip to the west coast in August I needed to prepare for.  All about that in the next article, so stay tuned.

What? really? 6 months?  Where have I been for the past 6 months? Let me play catch-up as I pledge to re-commit to this blog.  A lot has changed since my last contribution at the end of March.  I'm not going to bore you with all of it at once, so let me break this up into a couple of blog entries.  I'll start with what happened in April and May.

In April I finished getting my business in order - city business license, met with my accountant, started searching for a commercial studio space and signed up to pay sales taxes.  In the state of Virginia, photographs, including digital images, are considered material goods so sales tax is applicable.  So even session fees are taxable here in the Commonwealth.

©2017 Images by Design - Slow Art Day 2017

Remember Slow Art Day?  Well that was in April and we had another good turn out.  I find it wildly rewarding to introduce people to the joy of appreciating art.  Developing an ongoing relationship with art in its many forms will change the way you look at the world, your life, and yourself.  

May was a very good month.  I booked several boudoir customers (sorry guys, no photos), two commercial shoots and two magazine covers.  It encouraged me to make this move official and I announced to my employer (the US Navy) my intention to leave my Civilian job at the end of June.  At work there was much scrambling as my Command began the search for a replacement for the project that I was leading.

©2017 Drone capturing a thunderstorm over Blackwater Va.

Aerial (drone) photography is a revenue stream that I'm developing so in my spare moments I was taking the drone out to practice, test it's limitations (and mine), and try to get a few artistic shots in the process.  

I'll tell you all about June and July next....   Stay tuned.

In our fast paced, 24/7 connected, multitasking world many important skills atrophy.  For example, the practice of art appreciation has eroded to the point that now the average interaction with a work of art is about 10 seconds.  Establishing a personal connection with a piece takes a bit of careful contemplation, deliberate exploration, and self reflection.   

Back in 2008, Phil Terry, the CEO of Collaborative Gain - a pioneer in customer experience, was contemplating this sad phenomenon while visiting the exhibition “Action/Abstraction” at the Jewish Museum in New York. As he spent an hour in front of Hans Hofmann’s Fantasia (1943) he got the idea for Slow Art Day - a movement to encourage people to slow down, get to know a piece or two of art and hopefully make a more personal connection.  Terry explains "When people look slowly at a piece of art they make discoveries.  They discover the art of discovery - i.e. by looking slowly they find that they can see so much more than by looking for only a few seconds.  They also discover that they can participate in the art experience - i.e. that they can see and experience art without an expert (or expertise) and that they have a lot to say about the art after a period of contemplative looking."  What began as an experiment involving a handful of his friends at New York's Museum of Modern Art in the summer of 2009 has grown to be an annual international phenomenon.  This year Slow Art Day is April 8th, 2017 with volunteers hosting events at 176 venues around the globe.   

There are no hard rules that the hosts must follow - just get participants to spend 10-15 minutes each with selected art pieces in order to give them the opportunity to connect.  Since different art and different venues are all unique, no two Slow Art Day events are exactly the same.  

©2015 Images by Design

I've been involved since 2010, playing the host at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) here in Virginia Beach.  Each year has been more rewarding than the last.  As a group we've explored every kind of artwork imaginable from traditional media such as paintings and sculptures to videos, 3D printed jewelry and clothing.  I give participants the list of works to explore, some encouraging questions and tips to help guide them, and an hour in the galleries to explore each piece in no particular order.  During that hour I float around seeing how everyone's doing and try to help if they seem to get stuck.  After the hour is up, we head off as a group to a local restaurant and talk about our experiences.   The conversation is amazing!  Everyone has had something to say and without fail they've all managed to make a personal connection to at least one piece in the set.  

For the readers here in Hampton Roads, please join me at 11:00am this Saturday at Virginia MOCA.  For everyone else, go to the Slow Art Day web site and find a supporting nearby venue.  Experience the transformative power that slowing down, exploring and connecting with art can have.  You'll be happy you did.

Just before the holidays I was on a roll - adding to this blog just about every week.  January came with all of the new-year distractions.  Events (like birthdays) come weekly in our family the first two months of the year.   Lots of magazine work, several new customers, and life in general provided plenty of excuses not to take a few minutes to write here.  

I volunteered to shoot a "Trashion Show" in February - High School aged designers upcycle discarded materials into high fashion.

But all those are just that - excuses.  When I started this blog I promised myself that I'd be diligent and persistent in keeping this up to date.  More so to help keep myself on track and also for the small but steadily growing group of you that are following these.  This morning I read a fellow photog's blog about the importance of regular blogging.  Thank you Judith for reminding me I've let this slip.  Let's catch up.

1) I'm just about done with the formal incorporation of "Images by Design, LLC."  I've hired a talented attorney (Denise's boss) to help set it up and have taken the advice of my CPA for the tax and bean counting details.  I've run my own businesses in the past, but this time I have a more ambitious long-term strategy so I wanted to make sure I started this corporation with the ability to grow into that desired end-state.  I've got a few odds and ends to wrap up like my city business license, but that's just a quick trip to Commissioner's office. 

2) We're bringing in more paying customers.  While we love creative projects and model shoots, in the end we need regular customers to make this whole thing fly.  So far those customers have been fantastic and seem to have genuinely enjoyed their products from simple digital image sets and large prints to professional albums.  The traditional photography business stream is developing steadily. 

3) Denise's business is moving forward too.  Just this past weekend we spent time creating a new pH balancing beverage.  Denise had been using a commercial product but it was expensive and not always in stock.  So we formulated our own that has the same effects - when I drink this before bed, I clearly notice that I'm not at all stiff the next morning.  And our version actually tastes better too.  Speaking of taste, I challenged Denise that I wouldn't drink protein shakes unless they tasted like a hot-fudge sundae.  Well, after much playing around (formulating, actually) she now has created one that tastes just like a banana split.  Even better!  Our next challenge - create a protein smoothie that you can blend up on Sunday evening that stays fresh in the refrigerator for a whole week.  The idea being that a lot of folks might like to have a nutritious protein breakfast but don't, simply because of the time each morning it takes to prepare.  Oh, and Denise passed her latest Feng Shui certification she's been working on since November!

4) As part of the many facets of the business, I'd been considering aerial imagery as a necessary (and fun, I admit it) component to differentiate my offerings from others and foster other business opportunities like agriculture analysis, commercial surveys, etc.  I bought a professional quality drone to replace the "toy" I'd bought years ago and passed my Federal Aviation Administration Part 107 Small Unmanned Air System Commercial Pilot's Certification - that's a very long title to say I can fly a drone for hire.

Some of my magazine work that was published this month...

5) The magazine work is keeping me busy too.  This month I have my photos on the covers of and in the supporting articles in three separate publications.  While none of them have a national circulation, it does help explain where all of my time has gone.