Sometimes life as a photographer can be amazingly busy. Sometimes there is a bit of stress that goes along with that, and I simply take a deep breath, remind myself that I am amazingly lucky to be doing what I am doing, and feel ready to push on. The past few weeks have been part of that busy time, making it nearly impossible for me to get on here and get things back up and running as I should have. For that, I apologize. Much good seems to have come from my hard work lately though.
First off, we have produced one of our many annual “special section” publications at the newspaper recently. I say one of many, but in many ways, this is THE annual special section. It’s an amazingly fun project, just a lot of work. The project entails driving to the further reaches of Polk County, covering the undiscovered (and sometimes discovered) tourist destinations here locally. Previously the magazine was un-themed. This, for previous years, made for a lot of stories to be repeated ad nauseam. This year, we themed it with “agri-tourism,” allowing for several of Polk County’s most common tourist destinations to be covered, like wineries, but allow for some new photo shoots and stories as well. Fortunately for me, it allowed one of my more favorite Polk County places to be photographed once again- Wings of Wonder Butterfly Gardens. Yes, I have shot here before, and you can see my work for that on my website. But without fail, these little creatures provide.
One of hundreds of butterflies inside the sanctuary in Buena Vista.
Another- this one let me get so close, the full image shows clear texture of its wings.
I guess in my excitement for this publication, “Explore Polk County”, I probably took things too far and offered my design services as well. While the publication has received amazing feedback, the work that went into this probably consumed me a bit much. Regardless, the end product is beautiful and very much worth the read. You can check it out here.
In getting this ready, I met with a couple that I have worked with before, that run a brick oven bakery just west of Dallas, in Falls City. The bread is AMAZING, and very much worth the drive if anywhere in the area. Anyway, with the opening of their new restaurant, they were looking for local artists to help with the walls. So without further ado, another local showing of mine, the Falls City Bread Board:
My showing at the Falls City Bread Board
Anyway, there you have it. It’s been so busy, but it’s been amazing, and I can hardly wait for more.
