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Photographer’s Diary – Anticipation
I wanted to write this post before I left for New York, and PPE, but I simply did not have any spare time whatsoever. But I’m going to dig in and write my thoughts about what was to come, before it happened. Here goes…..
I’ve already blogged about Scott Kelby, his trip to Ruston and just how downright cool the guy is. But I don’t recall if I posted about him twisting my arm into going to NYC for PPE. Let’s think about what my life was prior to Kelby’s visit. I was simply a local photographer (not to say I’m more now) that shot LSU sports, Louisiana Tech sports and various portrait/editorial assignments. I averaged 20-30 hits on my blog daily, and I was cool with that. Well, Scott comes to Ruston and while we are eating after the game, he says basically, ‘come to New York’. After some back and forth about how I wasn’t sure, money, and how no one ever just said come to New York, he stood firm….’come to New York’. Keep in mind that the trip to NYC was a mere 4 days after this meal. Once I decided to go, my stomach was in knots for a week.
Going to New York, itself, was a huge deal for me. I’d been to some big cities, but this would be one of the biggest cities, on a whim, by myself and possibly life changing. I ran through my head all the things that could possibly change from simply going. Then Scott posted on his blog, about his trip to Ruston. Suddenly I had nearly 3,000 hits to my blog alone. I was getting email from all over the country and everything started changing. This only made me more nervous about the trip. Just think about the situation and apply it to yourself. You’ve been struggling to create any sort of buzz you could possibly generate, in your field. Your money is starting to run stressfully low and then this happens and you are immediately popular in whatever it is that you do. I was ill prepared for this. Don’t get me wrong, I love it and am excited now. But it stressed me out.
Then I started to think about the trip to NY in this new attitude. I started trying to think who I would meet in NYC. I followed Twitter and various blog posts and once it was clear who was there, and who I’d meet, my mind exploded. These guys are the cream of the crop. So it was going to be an amazing experience to be able to meet these guys with Scott and rub elbows with the industry insiders. I knew my life would be different when I returned. So I basically couldn’t sleep, or eat…..then I lost my debit card. My life was a mess. It was a good mess, but I simply couldn’t pull it together for the life of me. The next thing I knew it was 4:30 am Thursday morning and I was walking out the door to the airport. And I was right. Thing wouldn’t be the same anymore….
Wow!! I’m impressed and share your excitment – but you left your readers haning with that last line…talk about anticipation!! Best of luck!
Good things happen to good people. What a life changer, huh? Not sure how I would handle what you had ahead of you in this situation, but good for you to have taken life by the horns on this one and go. Kind of like in the first transformers movie when Sam asks his girlfriend if 60 years later you wonder if you should have gotten in the car. You got in the car my friend and good for ya!