Just A Man With A Camera

Last summer I bought and started shooting the first rolls of film that I have put through a camera since either 2008 or 2009 (Ilford XP2, 36 exposures). The urge to shoot some film started after my wife and I dug out her old Minolta Maxxum 7000i, and for less than $100 I found a couple good prime lenses for it. The original point of the exercise was to try and challenge myself to think more about each frame that I shot, because as we all know the cost of film, developing and printing is not cheap. What started out as an idea to with little focus other than to take value in every frame, very quickly turned into a new project to be excited about. 

It started during a trip to my hometown. Rather than taking the same highway we have driven countless times over the years, we decide to take the long way around and drive through several small towns that we have never been to before; both to sight see and to take photos. After visiting a few small towns and villages, and taking some shots of buildings that time has seemingly forgotten, I decided that these rolls of film would be dedicated to decay in small towns around the Canadian prairies.  Now when we take a drive somewhere the film camera goes in the car in case I find something I want to capture. That being said, with it being winter for the last 5 months, I haven't fired a single frame since October and haven't thought about it much lately. However, this weekend I picked up the book "Forgotten Saskatchewan" by local Saskatchewan photographer Chris Attrell which got me thinking about the photos I shot and having a look at the first roll that I have had developed.

Over the years of living in Saskatchewan and being around photographers, I grew somewhat tired of photos of abandoned barns and farm yards. Perhaps it's becuase I have seen them be the subject of so many bland photos (admittedly many taken by yours truly), but also because I actually grew up around this type of scenery. What makes them special to some people is doesn't really do much for me anymore.  However, what I do find interesting is decay and forgotten buildings not in a farmyard but in small towns and villages. Looking at something that once was probably a busy set of stores or main street, but was simply abandonded to time facinates me. Exploring some of these small towns that have or are in the process of crumbling often feels like I'm looking into the future of my hometown. Part of that process facinates me but at the same time makes me kind of sad.

While these places where never likely more than just small stops scattered along the side of a road, looking at the amount of buildings that are left in some of them tell us that at one point there was a demand for this place to have a gas station, grocery store, hardware strore, and maybe a restaurant or two. Now there's maybe only a gas station remains.  In some of these places the town hall, post office, and convenience store are all in the same building. Being that it is Saskatchewan there is a solid chance there is a grain elevator kicking around, but even those are dwindling more and more every year. This whole excercise has unexpectedly made me reflect on my hometown and the direction it's headed. It feels like every time I go home, there's another building that has either burned down, or the main street looks like it's deteriorating even more. There are some of these towns that we have come across in our travels that have pleasantly surprised us. We pull off the highway with little expecation to discover this nice little small town tucked away that really appears to take pride in what they have.  Their small main streets are well taken care of and the older buildings are preserved. It's really nice to see, but then it makes me shake my head and ask what is it that my hometown is missing that can't be like these places. Granted, I am getting the most high level, superficial view of these towns when I pass through them but they leave a good impression. It makes me wonder what kind of impression my hometown leaves to an outsider that's simply passing through? 

I have what I would call a complicated relationship with my hometown. It may be my hometown, but at the sametime not home anymore. I grew up on an acridge outside of said hometown. After my dad passed away it became too much for my mom to take care of on her own so in 2006 she sold it and moved into town. So when I go there to visit, it doesn't feel like going home, it's going to stay at mom's condo (if that makes sense). Additionally, there are a plethora of bad memories from growing up there that if I one day decide to pursue it will fill some therapists kid's college fund rather quickly. So, it's not the greatest place for me, but at the same time, I would hate to see it become just somewhere that a guy like me passes by and thinks of as just some place on the side of the road. These towns, villages, and hamlets were at some point (and still are) someone's home, and complicated relationships aside, no one wants to see their home crumble and wither away. Maybe this excercise that started off with me trying to take a handful of interesting images is really a lesson in finding value and appreciating what you have while you have it.  I may not love my hometown, but there's something special about going to the ice cream shop every summer. How would I feel if one summer I went home and found it looking like the photo below: boarded up, surrounded by overgrown weeds, and with a busted up station wagon parked beside it. I have no idea what that building is but it's at somepoint it was someones life's work. Someone was there, day in day out, and now time is just reclaiming it.

At this point I kind of feel like I'm loosing the plot of whatever this post was supposed to be about so I'm going to wrap it up. I still have one more roll of film to fire off in this series, so I will circle back on this later in the year one that is shot and developed. At that point I might reconsider what I'm doing with film, because did I mention that film, developing, and printing being expensive? I've been throwing around the idea of turning my basement bathroom in to a dark room and just doing my own developing with black and white, but that might just be one more project that gets piled onto my never ending list of projects. Until then, I'm just going to try and enjoy this part of the process, not think too hard about the wallet draining part of the process, and get the most value out of each individual frame, because who knows how long this subject matter will still exist.

If you recall, one of my goals for the year was to complete a 52 week photo challenge.  One new photo per week, every week this year, and posted on my BlueSky page. The first month was a success and I managed to not fall off the wagon and get a post in every week. One down, eleven to go!  I decided that on the first Monday of every month I would would publish a post looking back at the previous months photos. 

January 3 2026

The first weekly image of the month and year was from the coolest Christmas gift I recieved this year. My lovely wife gave me an Instax Mini Evo and after Christmas I was itching to get out and try it out. The weather wasn't great which usually keeps me inside and hibernating, but I pushed myself to get in my car and go for a drive for an hour just to see what I ended up with. Of the 4 images I ended up printing, this was my favourite.  I like way the tree branches at the top frame the image and lead the eye down the cold snowy road. This was taken with an old expired pack of film we had kicking around the house so the colours were a little off, but I still like the way it turned out.

The second weeks photo was a shot I did for a local business owner for his companies Google page.  They recently had the front of the store renovated and needed some new advertising photos. We had a stretch of unusually warm days early this month so I took the oppourtunity to get a nice photo. The snow in the front was much more brown and dirty in the foreground, but I used Affinity Photo to clean it up a bit, and look nicer.  I'll be doing another one in the spring/summer when it's not so snowy.

My wife gets her nails done ever few weeks by at the salon down the street from our house. During a previous photoshoot, we found that her nails really lit up and glowed under this lighting configuration so we wanted to see how thiese would look.  The skull is there both to give her something to do with her hands and because it is chrome-like and reflective and we thought it would look good under this lighting.

January 24 2026

Taken during a week in Mexico, this lighthouse was visible from our resort and was calling me to photograph it. My wife and I couldn't find an opportunity to get very close to it, but I did notice what I thought was an interesting vantage point. We get part of the hotel pool, with a dividing line sepratinging it from the ocean, which leads the eye further to the lighthouse, and and then further into another shade of blue of the deeper further away water. The line of the hotel wall and pool edge also draws the eye through the image and points us to the lighthouse in the distance.

Another fantastic gift my wife gave me for Christmas was a set of two extension tubes. I sat down to test them with my Olympus 60mm macro lens, trying to get the most detail out of something tiny, so I poured out a pile of coffee beans and found myself spending a couple hours attempting to locate the most visually appealing cofee bean in the bunch. After taking a second to give my head a shake once I  realized I had been spending way too much time being judgmental about the asthetic qualities of beans, I sorted through what I had shot and settled on this one.  I was very impressed by just how much detail I was able to pull out of such a tiny object. Additionally, I was able to push the IBIS of the OM1 and get some really sharp photos shooting handheld.  

Last week my wife and I escaped from the Hoth-like winter weather in Saskatchewan with an all-inclusive vacation to Cancun, Mexico. For something that is supposed to be a relaxing experience, I always find preparing for a vaction to be stressfull. Whether it's flying to another country or a road trip to another city, I often feel overwhelmed leading up to travel day. There's planning an itinerary, making packing lists, prepping things for the housesitter, making sure I have the right currency, and what feels like a million other little things. Additionally, of course there's always the question of what photography equipment to bring.

Way back when I sold photography equipment, I would watch people buy the biggest bag they could to carry every piece of glass that they could while on vacation. I'm not talking about working photographers, but everyday hobbyists and enthusiasts. I understand it, I did it too (why did I once feel the need to bring a 100mm macro lens on a trip that was going basically be a week long pubcrawl? You tell me!). When you spend that much on all that gear, you want to make use of it and be ready for any scenario. However, over the years I've become much more picky about what I take with me. So on this trip I took my OM1 body, 12-40mm 2.8, and 56mm 1.4. Something for general purpose use, and then something more specifically for taking portraits of my wife. I also took a Neewer inflatable tube light that my wife gave me for Christmas. I'm happy to say that they all got use, even though, in reality I definitly could have gotten away with not bringing the 56mm 1.4. However I wanted to take it because it is just a really nice small lens, that I know I don't use often enough, and I think it's the hidden jem of the m43 lineup. 

When I look back at what I shot over this trip, part of me really feels like my desire to get a 17mm 1.8 and for my EM5-mkII has been reinforced. Either that or to get a small point and shoot with a large sensor. Something small and relatively pocketable but higher quality than my phone. I did not shoot nearly as much as I hoped I would while we were out and about. I found myself not taking my camera out during some of our walks often enough, because I didn't want to be holding a larger camera while walking though the local markets. Not that I comletely felt like I was going to get robbed just for taking my camera out, but I also have enough sense that it's not out of the realm of possibility that I could become a target in ANY crowded city when holding a larger mirrorless camera. All that being said, I was pretty happy with a few photos I took with my phone while we were out and about. It is a Google Pixel 7, and can produce some pretty darned nice images. It's a good lesson that we all need to be reminded about sometimes, we shouldn't always be so picky about what equipment we have, and just use what's available to us. I always find that if I go somewhere with my mirrorless camera, I use my phone less. Probably because there's still a part of me that is a camera snob that looks down on phone cameras. When in reality I just need to take some damn photos with whatever I have available which was one one of the lessons driven home by some of my vacation reading (Find Your Frame: A Street Photography Masterclass by Craig Whitehead).

Taken with Google Pixel 7

That's not to say I didn't take anything with my mirrorless, just not as much as I thought I would...and I think that's ok. I had it in my head before leaving, that I was going to do a ton of shooting, but I found myself more just relaxing around the resort, swimming, I read a couple books, caught up on some much needed sleep, and just kind of took in the sights. There was a time in my life where I shot photos of everything, everywhere I went to the point where I felt like I was viewing the world moreso through a screen or a lens and not taking it in for myself.  I think overshooting also made the quality of my photos suffer as well. I was filling a memory card with files that didn't really mean anything to me, and were just destined to be deleted. I think that actively cutting back on the number of photos I took on a vacation made me enjoy myself more and also improved the quality of the images in the long run. I feel like, especially in the age of social media, there's this artificial pressure that we put on ourselves to photograph and record everything we do and to be the one to get the best vacation photos to share and show off.  Sometimes what's best is to just put down the lens, take it in for yourself. If you feel like snapping a shot then do it, but stop and take in the world around you first. 

For all the extra thought and concern I put into what kind of gear I brought with me I feel like I didn't shoot alot or as much as I wanted, but I am happy with the images that I did get. Maybe that's part of the lesson here. Don't think too much about what you are photographing with and focus on actually taking some photos.

Two of my favourite video games that I have played over the last few years are the Hollow Knight series; both the orignal and the recent Silksong. They are games with a high level of challenge, a huge amount of exploration, and plenty of gear upgrades for your character as you explore the world. However, when it comes down to, completing the game relies less on what gear and upgrades you collect along the way, and more on the players skill in battle. You can level up your weapon, add accessories, and aquire more health, but as far as I'm concerned there is no shortcut to winning.  You really have work on your technique and "git gud".

Why do I bring this up? Well, the comparison crossed my mind recently while thinking about the gear I have, and that old topic of G.A.S - Gear Aquisition Syndrome.  Most of us will suffer from this at some point.  At this point it's been talked about to death by countless youtubers (I happened across multiple new videos on it over the last couple of weeks).  I've had it, I've witnessed it, and during my time as a camera store salesman actively encouraged it.  I can happily say that I feel like I'm in a place where I don't feel the pull of any large gear purchases. I have two great camera bodies, some Olympus Pro zoom lenses, and a few other nice fast primes. It's a pretty darn well rounded gear bag that I'm fortunate to have been able to aquire over the years. If there is anything I might add, it's a 17mm 1.8, most specifically for street photography, but I would have to find an amazing deal on it at the exact same time I suddenly fell into some disposable income.

So if this has been talked about to death, why am I talking about it? What do I have to add? I think it's important to step back every once in a while and not look at what you feel like is missing from your gear bag, but what you do have, be grateful for that, and learn to work with and improve your craft with those limitations. In other words: "git gud". For some people in this hobby money is no object and they jump from being curious about a Rebel kit to a full frame body and pro glass without even thinking about it (again, I worked in a camera store and saw it happen often).  But as we all know, expensive gear does not make a good photographer. I would see the results of these purchases, sometimes accompanied by complaints that their photos were not what the photographer expected.  To which I had to gently explain to them that perhaps they should take a class or two rather than blame the equipment.

It also doesn't help that people today are constantly being bobarded by advertising, influencers, youtubers, review sites, and who knows what else constantly showing us some new tech that will make life easier and finally get that perfect shot that is just out of reach. This isn't unique to this hobby. If there is a hobby out there, there are people trying to make money off of telling you what new thing you to buy from their amazon affiliate link so that your art doesn't suck so much. It's kind of crazy to think that there was a time in our media consuming lives were if we saw a half hour infomercial on TV we would change the channel and do anything else. But now they are just called gear hauls and list videos and we gobble them up to find out what new little tech is just a click away that will make our life so much easier.

Something that makes me shake my head is are Reddit posts from people expanding thier kits with overlapping focal lengths, multiple versions of the same lens, and an excess of miscelaneous gear that probably will rarely be used. I see this and I can't comprehend why? Not only why but how? Camera tech has gotten to a point where I don't knwow how it gets better other than noise reduction at extreme ISO's, and how much sharper can some lenses get. I used my last body for nearly 10 years before replacement as my main workhorse (I plan on keeping the old one as a travel/street photography camera for if I ever aquire that previously mentions 17mm 1.8). Maybe for some people it's the shopping addiction. Perhaps it's simply the collector urge to gather more stuff, and if collecting all of this gear makes you happy, who am I to argue with that. I am the last person who probably should be throwing shade at someone for accumulating a collection of impractical things. I have various collections of things myself and someone might walk into my house and ask why I need so many Michaelangelo Ninja Turtle toys. So I get it. However, I know for many photographers it's that feeling like that next piece of gear is the missing piece that is going to push their work to the next level. However, I'm not exactly saying anything groundbreaking here, but there's no shortcut to quality and what they really need to do is put in some practice time and "git gud".  

Then there's those of us who have made the most out of what we have for as long as possible. At this point, I have the Olympus Pro gear that I always wondered how a meager hobbiest could afford. Most of it came purchased on eBay used from Japan, or deep courtosy of Black Friday discounts, but regardless of the dollar signs attached to the purchases, I feel increadibly fortunate to be in a position to have it. I feel like I fought and clawed my way to get here. Hell, I think one of the reasons I am at this point is because I made the decision to get sober (restricting myself to only have some drinks when I'm on holidays), thus openning up the budget to acquire equipment I only dreamt of at one point in my life. That realization that I feel like I am at the end of my gear aquisition journey fills me with so much contentment and relief. Of course it's not like I won't find something to add on occasion; an accessory or two or maybe some new lights that function differently than my entry level ones. However, it's as if there's one less thing holding me back in my photo journey. Not because my gear was never good enough, but because I now don't have any excuse to focus on the craft and my technique. Taking away that excuse may feel difficult at times, but it is also freeing and simplifies life. If I'm not happy with my shots, I can't blame the gear. I need to work on the craft. I need to take the lesson I learned from Hollow Knight and git gud.

For my last post I wrote about some of my goals for 2025 and how that turned out, so I figured the logical thing to do is move onto what I hope is in store for 2026. At the beginning of 2025, I said that I'm not much for new years resolutions and that still stands, however I do like trying to set some yearly goals for myself to attempt to accomplish over the year. Whether it's making a certain big purchase, going on a particular trip, a fitness goal, or completing a project, I think that it's important for me to set some kind of goal. I also find that it's helpful for me to try set a deadline if I can.  That keeps me on track and ensures I don't just keep telling myself "I'll get to it eventually". Late in December, I bought myself a yearly planner, a nice new notebook, and a set of nice pens to help keep me on track, document my goals, and give me a visual aid for how the year is going which will hopefully help me stay focused. 

• Let's start off with a small one: During the summer of 2025, after dusting off my wife's old Minota SLR and finding a very good deal on a couple prime lenses, I started shooing a couple rolls of black and white film. One is completed and developed and the other is still in the camera. I haven't finished it yet, because early on in the first roll I made the concious decision that these rolls were going to be specifically dedicated to photographing decaying buildings in small prairie Canadian towns that I would come across during our summer road trips. I plan on continuing with this and making a little project out of the images.

• Continuing on with the subject of film, my wife purchased me an Fuji Instax Mini Evo for Christmas, and I would like to come up with a concept for a small project to use it for. Additionally, I want to just take it out with me regularly and have fun with it. Focus on good compositions but not overthing things like shutterspeed and aperature.  Just have fun with what's in my hand, infront of me, and make the most of each little tiny frame.
  

• Winter bird photogaphy. Nothing more to it than that really. I go for walks to photography birds and help me relax in every other season, but I tend to hibernate and avoid it in winter.  Even if I get out only a few times, I want to use it as a reason to get myself off the couce and be more active over the course of the winter.

• I want to get more shots of the milky way this year. Considering it was my first good attempt at doing so, I was really happy with my one milky way photo that I took this year.  That being said, I would like to keep improving and not just leave it at that.

• There are four markets that I hope to be selling my photographs at throughout the course of the year.  These are four specific ones that I think my toy photography prints will do well at.  I would like to do more than just these four, but these are the big ones: PopconYXE, the Cathedral Village Street Fair, Things I'd Kill For, and (if they run it again this year) the Moose Jaw Retro Game convention.

• Something I wanted to accomplish last year that fell by the wayside was regarding portraiture and further learning how to use my studio lights. This includes having the confidence to ask more people to get in front of my lens, as well as giving them direction once they are infront of it. I have a studio space that I can potentially use and rent fairly inexpensively, it is just a matter of finding people to model for me, coming up with concepts, and execute the plan (which all sounds nice and easy, until the monster that is my social anxiety interferes). If I can improve in this area I feel like it will be a big step for me, not just because I want to improve my skills in this subject, but mentally this has been a big hurdle for me to overcome and it will be a boost to my overall self confidence.

• I do have some goals regarding this blog. I know that I am pretty darned inconsistent when it comes to publishing posts on this page, but I'm hoping I can turn that around over this year.  The goal is publish one new post ever other Friday. That could give me time to discuss a decently well thought out piece and not just rush out something every week for the sake of getting it out every week. Additionally, there one other goal that ties into this one, and that is to challenge myself to do a 52 images in 52 weeks project. I will produce one new photo per week to post on my Blue Sky page.  Most likely it will be posted on Saturday, and then at the end of the month I will write a seperate blog post wrapping up what I achieved that month. What I liked, what I disliked, anything I feel that was interesting about my process. 

It feels like there's alot that I'm trying to accomplish with this hobby/growing small side hustle. If I know myself, at some point thought the year I will probably overdo it, feel burnt out, and need to take a break. I feel like all of these goals are very achievable and it's just all on me to make them happen. There are no outside forces that can hold me back or create excuses for me to fall on about why something wasn't achieved.  Of course life being what it is, there may be a curveball thrown my way at some point, but I just need to keep my eyes on how rewarding it will feel to cross these items off my list for next year. This is my 40th year on this earth and I want it to be overflowing with personal fullfillment.                                          

As it seems is a somewhat usual occurence, I find myself having taken a long break from writing on this blog without having throught about it. Alot has happened since my last post in August. I even had a post half written in early September that I just could not find a way to wrap up well, and then it fell by the wayside. I started this year talking about new photography goals for 2025, so it seemed like a good way to get back writing by covering what happened since my last post, wrap up the last year, and take a look at those goals I started the year with and reflect on how that turned out.

Photographing the milky way

One of the main goals of mine was to attempt to photograph the milky way. My entire life I have been fancinated by the stars. When I was a kid growing up on the farm, I would spend evenings just staring up at the sky and imagining what's up there. At this point in my life, after living in the city for over 20 years, I do the same any time I have the oppourtunity. Any attempt I had previously made to sphotography the starts had turned out quite poor.  Admittedly that was because of a combination of not properly understanding the methods of shooting, not having the correct equipment, and not shooing at the correct time or location. So basically, I did everything wrong because I was just winging it without actually researching any of it.  Luckily, earlier this year my wife's family farm became available to us as a backdrop and perfect place to shoot the night sky. It is only aout 30-40 minutes out of the city, but it is far enough out of the city that on a clear night, during a new moon, the sky lit up like I had not seen seen it since I was a kid on my own families farm.  Once we were able to take advantage of the farm, we only had a couple of occasions where we could go out and shoot with any hope of success, and I'm happy to say that what is one of my favourite photos of the year came from that first night out there.

Sell prints

This was a big one of me. I have spent so many years enjoying the process of photography mostly for myself. I would share my photos on Instagram and get some good feedback here and there, but I was not sure how attempting to sell my work would pan out. I know the majority of my work is really different.  It's toy photography, and alot of people haven't seen that or understand what I'm doing with it. So there was a lot of anxiety leading into it. I spent a lot of time and money getting myself set up for that first market in November, and I'm happy to say it payed off. Not only was that first market financially successful, but I got some wonderful feedback on my work. It was one thing to have friends and family, and faceless commenters on the internet say they liked something I made, but it was a whole other thing to have a stranger come up to my booth and get excited about a photograph I took and pay for a copy of it. I left that first sale both exhausted because it was a long day, but also excited and enthusiastic because it was such a positive experience. A few weeks later another oppourtunity at another market; this time over a whole weekend. There was a lot of anxiety about it, because I knew that there was going to be a very different crowd at this one. Unfortunately it did not work out as well as the first sale, but what I know that not all markets are going to work out, but I also recognize that at this particular market it seemed that no one did well....so at least it wasn't just me! There's plans for next year to keep on moving on and expand into a few different products, and themes for my work

Paid gigs

This is something that didn't exactly pan out the way I hoped it would. Not that I had huge plans for what I was going to do other than hopefully do some headshots, but we will see what happens next year. Something that did come up as a result of the first market I worked was the possibility of doing photos of minuatures for an upcoming tabletop game that another one of the vendors is developing.  Something I did make happen was getting back volunteering with the Queen City Marathon after being away since 2018.  That was a fun gig for a weekend, and the honorarium helped pay for a display calibrator. I think I'll be going back next year, and hopefully I can make some more oppourtunites happen.

So what are the plans for next year? I have some ideas which are expansions of what you've read about here, but there are some other more specific projects I want to want to try and focus on. I will be writing about that in my next post and plan on having that published in the first week of January. See you in the new year!

My wife and I recently took a trip across the province to visit our first renaissance fair! Attending a ren fair has never been on my to do list, but when the idea of going was first brought up a very enthusiastic and unexpected "hell yes!" burst out of my mouth. I really did not see that coming. So we got our tickets, a hotel room, and spent the next couple months collecting some items to put together some costumes. Naturally, I was also going to take this as an opportunity to do some shooting, not just at the fair, but to add to my ongoing project involving shooting small towns and villages on the prairies (but that will be a discussion for a future blog post)

There were vendors with increadible hand made goods (mixed in with plenty of Temu garbage that unfortunalty sneaks into too many "art" markets these days), a magician, musicians, weapons demonstrations and combat renactments, jousting, and tons of good food. So lots to shoot right? Well, I found myself struggling with something that I often run into in these situations. I'm all gung-ho to do shooting because there's so much going on around me, but my social anxiety pops up and I can't bring myself to ask someone of I can take their photo.  There were all these people around with fantastic costumes, who are doing it because they like to show off, but for some reason I have it in my head that me asking to take their photo is somehow bothering them.  So most of what I shot was from farther back and either trying to make myself go unnoticed while demonstrations and performances went on.

The day ended with a jousting demonstration which gave me an oppourtunity to put my telephoto to work with some fast action. At this point, as far as fast action I have only tried to catch birds in flight with this camera and lens. While it didn't lock focus or track as well as I would hope, I did manage to get a few shots that I'm pleased with.  There were a few that I liked the content of better than the ones below, but they were not sharp. The tracking autofocus that was locked onto one of the riders, suddently changed to the events presenter who came into the foreground as I was panning across the jousing field. I can't fault the camera and lens too much though, because my position from the stands didn't help much either. There were fences, and other event staff that got in the way of my shots as well that contributed to only walking away with a few shots I was excited about. 

All in all it was a good day. Fun events, good food, good friends, good vendors, and I walked away with a few lessons.  I need to get more practice with my telephoto and camera's tracking focus. I haven't found myself in situations all that often that give me the oppourtity to practice, so that may be something I should put some focus on. Additionally, I need to work though some of that social anxiety about approaching people about taking their photo, especially in situations like this where they are practically begging for the attention and compliments about their outfits. Maybe this just further proves that photography has become theraputic for me.  I'm not only finding joy in the artform, but taking what I'm doing and trying to work on myself and my mental health. It's just proof that little by little, I'm on the right path with what I'm doing.