Well, the month of January I've been working on trying to build momentum with my photography and get my business moving in the right direction. I'm continuing to work on both the 365 project and the portrait-a-day project that I started in 2017. Another personal project that I'm trying to resurrect is a weekly creative portrait project. Yesterday was the first day where I resumed work on that project.
For my business, I'm trying to have at least one portrait session each week. So far I've accomplished that goal between two paid shoots and two free ones. The paid ones was Bhargavi's maternity session and family portraits for the Vashers. The free ones were of my nephew, Je'kori, and then an anniversary session with my parents. Also, I had the honor of photographing the ribbon cutting for Real Invest Inc. It was very cool getting to see a side-by-side comparison of how they remodeled their office building and exciting to hear how they could help with future developments in our community.
I am also happy to say that I followed through on becoming a member of the Lake County Art League and the Waukegan Chamber of Commerce. I'm looking forward to seeing how these organizations can help me to grow as an artist and businessman. Joining the Chamber has already started to pay off with attending their Business After Hours event at Cracken Cakes & More. If it wasn't for attending that event, I wouldn't have met Mikki Schuk of Real Invest Inc. and been asked to photography the ribbon cutting. Also, I met a fellow photographer named Marie Schoblocher. She was helpful in that she gave me new ideas for my marketing and also said maybe I could second shoot some weddings with her.
Finally, what is life if you can't have a little fun. I went over to my alma mater to see Waukegan beat one of their big rivals, Zion-Benton. Also, I took in a couple shows in January. The Aragon Ballroom is starting become a venue that I'm becoming pretty familiar with the last couple months. This month I went to Datsik there and did he ever put on a show. My other show in January was actually my first show at the United Center. I finally got to see one of my favorite bands, the Killers. It was definitely up there as far as my favorite shows I've attended goes.
