Wow. I hadn’t realized it had been so long since I’d written anything in my journal here. And shame on me for not submitting anything either.

I will say that the last year has been somewhat of a growth experience for me in several areas. I’ve had to reassess how important some things and people were and then decide if I still wanted them in my life.

Picked up one new hobby and just recently started getting back to an old one.

Now I could go on and on about what’s been happening since last year, but honestly, if my life was THAT interesting, I’d probably have a damn Twitter account and ‘tweet’ anything worthwhile. But it isn’t and I don’t.

Still working on the photography although the progress in that area is much slower than I’d like but I have no one to blame for it but myself. As much as things have gone on this past year, it’s also been kind of a lazy one for me too.

So here’s to hoping that I don’t let 2009 go out with a whimper. Maybe not so much of a bang, but not completely quiet either.

Hope everyone is well. Take care.

~Van

No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the Earth. I have been extremely busy. Did a couple of photo shoots that need some post-processing, have some really great stock work that I’ve got my hands in, and outside of that; I’ve been busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

I would imagine at some point that I’ll have at least a couple of trial and error photos up before the year’s out. If I’m not overly satisfied with them, I’ll wind up putting them in my Scraps section.

But other than the artistic stuff, my personal life has been quite busy as well. Things have finally gotten off the ground for me to get my comic and book store open, so I’ve been filling out paperwork, going over forms, and all of the wonderful things that make one crazy when you decide you want to open a business. I’m hardly sleeping, I’m cranky to no end, and apparently a couple of old flames have decided that I’m worth looking into once again. (Neither ended badly, surprisingly, and hey, recycling is a good thing!) So I’ve got that I’m dealing with too.

Strange that when my life is filled with chaos and when I have barely any real free time to myself is when I shine the most…odd.

Anyhow, I hope that everyone is doing well and enjoyed their summer. I’m glad that fall is here, because it means that I’m that much closer to getting all of my prepping for having lap-band surgery. So, yeah, chaos…lol.

Peace.

Just a real quick word to let people know that even though this account is new, I'm not new to DA. I have an account that I started a few years ago that's kind of a mix of everything I've done artistically over the past several years, but nothing specific. This account on the other hand, will focus almost solely on my photography and my work in photographic art. I used to do photography years ago, but it never truly amounted to anything; whereas now, I'm hoping to gain some new experiences and insight.

For the time being I will keep both accounts going and see how it goes. I'm not sure how often I'll be uploading my work as I'm getting to be more and more picky with the work I choose to showcase. I don't do this full time as I have a somewhat busy life (like many people), but hopefully I'll put up new work often enough to keep people interested in what I'm doing.

What I will ask of people is to bear in mind that all the work I'm doing is completely self-taught. I read and try out new techniques often, and some work for me and some don't. And of course, there are some things that I'm better at than others. Maybe at some point I'll take a photography course, but for right now, I don't have that planned. But I will try to continuously improve. And that's all that I promise anyone.

~Van