We’re finally faced with the spring iteration of Daylight Savings Time, which means the official start of spring can’t be that far away.
The promise of warmer days, fishing trips, and—someday—Teva tans looms just around the corner, and you can’t help but get excited at the hint of spring in the air. The light is a little warmer, the air a little less harsh. Birds start chirping, making that 5AM wakeup call a bit more tenable. Small things that make a world of difference.
After a winter tucked in the very snowy Northeast, I was damn near ready to pull out a tee-shirt when the temperature crested 37 this past week. It’s funny what becomes relative; we humans are remarkably adaptable creatures. Good or bad, eventually everything normalizes.
Projects, problems we have to solve, are what keep that normalization from slipping into mind-numbing drudgery.
This past week I had an exciting project plopped in my lap, and it was eye-opening how, after a dreary winter, the prospect of a large challenge was simply damn energizing. I laid awake well past midnight for the first few nights, ideas flitting through my brain about how to tackle the shoot, where to go, who to use. Eventually I found myself brewing a cup of tea and using a dry erase marker on my fridge to map out plans at 2AM. (It’s brilliant—wipes right off, and transforms a fridge into a creative space.) Nothing like drawing designs on the fridge in the wee hours of the morning in a forty-something degree apartment.
The promise of challenge, of travel, of free-wheeling creativity. Time behind the camera and time spent gathering stories in the field. There’s simply nothing better.
Time to think about packing the camera bags, trying to find that never-ending (and, it seems all too often, potentially impossible) balance between fishing gear and photo gear, and lay out logistics.
(More details to unfold as this assignment comes together. It’s going to be a fun one.)
