the floodgates have opened, and the distant future story is pouring out of me like a stormdrain waterfall after a deluge. ok maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but the point is, in the last few days, i’ve completed two chapters and written a brief for the next two.

meanwhile in photo, i’ve already wrapped up the photoshop edits on my shoot with nima on sunday, and my process is getting a lot faster as i get used to the flow. i still have a few left to run through photoshop from my saturday shoot with swana but those should move pretty quickly, too. i was really excited to edit the photos from that shoot because i wanted to see how the eos rp performed, and it did not disappoint. i was really impressed with the results, and any regret i was harboring that i’d made a dumb purchase has been washed away.

once i finish swana’s edits, i will have to go back and run a few more photos from a previous editorial photo shoot i did with nima a week ago, and i have even more photoshop edits to run through from the lookbook shoot i did with nima and eliza. i really need to get those sorted out in the next couple of evenings so that i don’t have any backlog left over when we leave for europe next wednesday. and plus, i want to put out a video tomorrow that includes some of those photos so there’s that, too.

speaking of video and europe next week, this trip is going to be a test run, sort of a proof of concept to see how well i can balance being present on the journey with making a good travel vlog. our iceland trip ended up working out like i’d hoped, and i learned a lot from that journey. so hopefully i can iron out the kinks from that failure and turn them into a more successful runthrough this time around. all of this is anticipation of putting together a killer travel vlog during our australasia trip this summer.

and speaking of that, nima and i have had a very interesting back and forth dialogue around the purchase of a drone to take along for that trip, and we’ve both kind of gone back and forth on whether or not it’s something i should really be buying. one of the biggest points of contention for us during the iceland trip was that i was spending way too much time trying to gather content and not enough time being present in the moment and enjoying the trip as part of a couple. so for that reason, i’m afraid that if i have a drone i’ll just want to play with it the whole time. and then there is the added weight and bulk to my bag. and the cost. so there are those things against it. but the other day, after i said that it probably was not going to be something i could afford to buy unfortunately, nima pointed out that this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and there are some places we’re going where there’s not a lot of drone footage available. so maybe it does make sense to get a drone. she even went so far as to say that she could cover the cost of it if it becomes too much for me to take on (depending on whether or not i have a job when we come back!). so really she’s taken a complete 180-degree turn on this, going from completely opposed to tentatively supportive. i just need to remember that this is a tool that is meant to be used very selectively and not something to break out at every turn.

and that brings me to a final point for today. i am working to become more selective and less trigger happy in my photography, and that is something i want to translate into video as well. minimalism is something that i prize, and i think that by gathering small amounts of meaningful content, i’ll be able to tell a much more concise and impactful story than if i gathered hours and hours of content with hopes that i’ll have the time and interest in sorting through it later. another thing that iceland taught me is that while i have a ton of good content, most of it will never be used because it’s unnecessary, and if anything, the volume of content makes me less interested in approaching the project in the first place. i’ll need to be very selective about what i shoot, thinking about what i will say about it and how it will be used rather than just being a garbage collector, gathering everything and then sorting through it later to see if i caught some treasure within the pile of trash i accumulate. this is what i will meditate on today on my commute home.