Today i was looking for an old picture i wanted to print out and i ended up finding a ton of pictures i had taken years back when my interest in pursuing photography just began to emerge. some were taken when i was just about to leave Los Angeles and i had bought a crappy digital just to snap some pics of all the things i was going to miss after i left. others were taken the 1st few months- few years i was back in Buffalo some were taken with a crap film camera i had, some with my 1st generation Iphone. those first months/years in Buffalo were extremely hard for me all the friends i had made in my past 12 years were all back in LA. i was beyond lonely and insanely depressed by the cold, dark winter here and the seemingly negative attitude that seemed to come with it like a storm. Times were so tough i couldn't get a job out here to save my life. every time i did finally get hired somewhere the jobs i got just felt so beneath me. i don't want to sound cocky at all i just really didn't like the sleazy environments i was in. Oh screw it, i'll just tell you i was cocktail waitressing at Rick's tally ho and it was awful it was soul sucking! never in my life out of all my travels or the big cities i lived in LA, Vegas, San francisco at my work places did i ever encounter drugs or prostitution. there it was right before my eyes on the corner of transit & genesee street. every night i was there i'd smoke a cigarette on the patio and wish i was dead. i just have always felt like this pure artist with all these great ideas and aspirations. watching those dreams crumble like ashes from my cigarette into the snow night after night till 4 am was heart wrenching. i did meet some cool people and some book worthy characters, i guess it just made me sad to see pretty girls with just as much potential as anyone else degrade them selves and snort & shoot up their life away to a drug induced coma. i'll never forget one night one of the bartenders told Rick (the owner) that he caught one of the girls giving a customer a hand job and Rick's response was "hand job? what's a hand job this is a strip club not a church!" well needless to say that was it for me, time to get out of a situation thats only getting worse and worse. i think a few months after i left that place was raided and a bunch of people were arrested so sometimes you gotta know when to get out! that 1st winter back here the only thing that brought me joy was taking pictures i'd walk around the forest lawn cemetery, delaware park, hoyt lake, the old train station, allentown, ellicottville and just shoot things i found interesting. those little walk around assignments i gave myself really made me start to "see" things it was the begining of my discovery. i really loved how the things i found mundane would end up being my favorite shots, and when things just fell into place accidentally. the whole process of learning was all very exciting and furfilling. now that i always had a camera in hand it seemed to somehow give me license to walk around by myself and no longer feel anxious and lonely. the camera was my buddy and with it i could enter other's lives. it became a great ice breaker and got me back out there socializing again. when i wasn't shooting i was watching movies, documentaries and reading books about famous photographers. i eventually got a job as a tour guide and that was a great experience being in nature all the time and entertaining a crowd. i loved it and had a great time but it was seasonal so by fall i ended up trying to find work again. it just wasn't in the cards i had so many awful interviews, and basically a lot of doors slammed in my face. i started to think i was this horrible undesirable candidate for a job. i really think that life is a constant test the force from above basically hands you situations just to see how you react. i decided to take all those lemons and make some amazing lemonade. i started my own photography business and have been doing that as "my job" for over a year now. i'm not gonna sugar coat it and say i'm rolling in the money cause i am not but i am getting by and i am doing it my way. so i guess the lesson in todays blog is sometimes the bad things that happen to you are like arrows pointing you in the right the direction. you just gotta hang on and roll with the punches. i think now of all those people who were mean to me at those interviews i think of how low i felt, how i really let them effect me and doubt my self worth. i think it was all worth it cause if it wasn't for them i wouldn't be where i am today doing what i love. so if anybody ever reads this and you have a dream and you think that the crap hand life has dealt you is going to keep you from it, i am here to tell you "you can do whatever you want, you create your destiny, you make it happen". i am glad i found these pictures today, back when i shot them i don't think i thought they were any good. seeing them now i think they are great! i really love to see the process, to see where over time i have improved. its nice to see that even with the crap cameras i had back then i still got some amazing shots. the one up top of the guy in B&W looking like it was taken a long time ago he's dressed like a nice young polish boy. thats my brother and one of my 1st models! that photo won a photo contest a while back and was published in The Art Voice.
