Blog 3: “Invest in yourself. You can afford it. ”
Hello! It’s Jesse here again.
Recently, I printed two of my new favourite photos. One of them is a photo taken in Port Dalhousie, Ontario just after the sun had set and the moon became prominent and the other was taken during sunset in Panama City Beach, Florida. I like these photos for different reasons. I like them both for different reasons, but I also like the reason they exist even more.
The one taken just after sunset with the lighthouse is my favourite ‘nighttime’ shot in a long time. Not only does it look appropriately coastal, but also it fits the theme in my life of a more nautical mentality. The boats and their masts add so much to the photo and it definitely helped that the moon decided to be front and center for that photo as well.
The sunset on the beach photo is my favourite landscape photo. To me it evokes the amazing beauty of the tropics and the wonder of nature. Seeing the sun set like that is the closest proof I have of a god because I don’t believe such beauty could happen in such a serendipitous way. During the sunset I took about half a dozen shots from a variety of angles, but it was this one with the waves building to such a perfect crescendo and the sun illuminating the sky in such a perfect way that this one became my personal favourite.
Photo Credit to Melissa Pilon
It took three paragraphs to get to the actual point of this blog. Both these photos were taken ‘off-the-clock’ so to speak. The sunset photo was taken on vacation, and the moon photo was taken on a little trip to Port Dalhousie to teach my girlfriend the finer points of photography. During the summer, it’s normal to almost take for granted the skill my team and myself use on a weekly basis shooting weddings. When I started shooting weddings way back in 2013 (2012 if you count a wedding I did while simultaneously being a drunk groomsmen, but I don’t count it), I didn’t invest the time to explore other photographic passions. That’s simply not the case now. I try to go out and take a good set of photos at least once a month, but now that I have a girlfriend who is itching to learn more, I find myself shooting more than I ever have and I have to say, it’s quite nice. Take the time to do the things you enjoy.