Long-distance motivation

Long-distance motivation

What does it feel like to reunite with one of your best friends whom you haven't seen in ~2 years? Happy? Overjoyed? Awkward? For me, it was more like... well, as if I just saw him yesterday. That is my favorite aspect about my best friends - it doesn't matter how long we go without seeing each other, because when that time ends and after hugs are exchanged, everything is back to where it was left off, however long ago that may have been. Life moved all around us in the meantime but "we" were just on pause. Within minutes I even cajoled him into helping me get my lighting setup sorted out for another shot I was working on and ended up with this photo as a bonus!

Dave moved across the ocean with Marie and manages to make a living by being creative - something I have an ever-growing respect for. It is hard enough for me to (try to) be creative in making photos just for fun, but to rely on that creativity in whatever form it is expressed to make a living seems like it would be stressful at best and counter-productive, at least at first glance. Besides how hard it is to actually get paid even close to what that creativity is really worth - how you "force" yourself to get those creative juices flowing.... and keep them sustained? My most creative ideas come when I have peace and quite and time to think! It is truly inspiring to me that there are people out there who can do this day-in and day-out and continue to create.

As Casey Kasem used to say, "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars" Dave!

Strobist info: Subjects are lit with an SB-600 in a homemade beauty dish from high and slight camera right, 1/2 power. Fill light is from an SB-25 in a shoot-through umbrella from just below the camera lens, down ~1.5 stops. Back/hair light is from an SB-800 directly behind them. All lights had Full CTO gels on them to shift the color of the flashes to amber, which when white-balanced in-camera to Tungsten, shifts the ambient light outside the window to blue.

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