Another year and another successful, and enjoyable Funk Fest! I have posted some photos from this years at the bottom of this blog. If you have not checked out this annual music festival held in downtown Punta Gorda, do yourself a favor….go next year! I also tried my hand at video editing and posted a video on my Facebook/YouTube page if you wanna check that out. Trying to do these concerts/festivals more often and I have been making some contacts that hopefully can make that happen. Doesn’t pay anything, but I get in free, up close, and it gets my work out there to thousands of people.

     I am getting super excited for my cross-country trip into Western Canada in just 4 weeks! I still have a bunch of planning to do, but as I mentioned in my last post there is no real itinerary other than Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. I was talking to my friend Chris, that will be coming with me the other day, and we may choose to stay in Banff more than two days if we are really inspired, or we may still go to Vancouver and Seattle. It’s all kind of up in the air. I am normally someone that likes to have a strict plan, but I don’t want to put us on a schedule other than needing to be back home on April 13th. I just want to relax, and take a ton of awesome photos.

     I won’t lie, the trip is a little scary to me for many reasons. Mainly, my wife and I have never spent more than a couple days apart in the almost 14 years of our marriage. I think we are both quite anxious about it, but I think it will be healthy for both of us. There is also the large amount of miles I will be putting on my vehicle, the unpredictable weather that time of year, etc. I strongly believe though that the good will far outweigh the bad, and I’m sure the time will fly by. I just hope we can fit in enough shooting to make the 100 hours of driving worth it. I see a lot of Red Bulls, and 5 Hour Energy’s in my future!!

     As I mentioned previously, I want to heavily document this trip, and I hope you all enjoy following us on the journey. I encourage you to share our posts on your social media pages so that we can reach a larger audience. I also plan on handing out business cards to people we meet along the way (restaurant, hotel, and park employees, etc) in hopes of growing my brand and maybe even selling some of my work. I’m sure my blogging will be much more frequent for those two weeks as well. Please follow Chris Burkett Photography on social media as well. He will be on the trip with me, and I think you will enjoy his work. I will link his social pages on my Facebook in a post.

     Other than that I have no big plans/shoots upcoming. A couple real estate and portrait/headshot shoots is all. When I return from my trip I have a small music festival in Tampa on April 14th, and then the 3 day Rockville festival in Jacksonville on May 3-5. 

     Hope you are all well. I’ll probably do another post before I leave, but if not I hope you all enjoy watching our journey!

       I only went 4 weeks between blog posts this time! Actually I’ve been meaning to make a post for at least a week, but just couldn’t find the time. Last post I mentioned I was going to be going on an Eco Tour of Babcock Ranch. Well it was a really early morning (had to be there by 7:00am and its a 30 min drive), but well worth it. We saw almost every animal you can think of thats native to Florida except a panther. I have put a few of the photos below, but do yourselves a favor if you live in SW Florida, take one of those tours. You won’t regret it.

       So on to the explanation of the post title. I seem to have a “problem” collecting cameras and lenses. The good news is I think my collection is pretty much complete now. I just bought a Nikon D500, and a Nikon D5600 which takes my collection of camera bodies to 7 (D850, D810, Z6, D7200, and D40 in addition to the new ones). There are a couple reasons for the new purchases. I am interested in getting into video and vlogging in addition to photography so the D5600 will be my vlogging camera since it has a flip screen. The D500 is an extremely fast camera that shoots at 12 frames per second, useful for wildlife and sports photography. My D850, while a superior camera in many other ways (43MP vs 21MP) only shoots at 7 FPS. I have yet to use either one but I’m excited to take them on a test run later this week.

       The biggest news I have for this post is that on March 29th I will be leaving to go on 2 week, cross country trip into Western Canada strictly to take photographs and videos. I have been wanting to go to Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada for at least a year now, and decided to just go. My wife has 2 less weeks of vacation than I do, and she gets bored if I wanna spend time taking photos on our vacations, so this worked out well. I decided to invite along another local photographer friend as well. We don’t have everything planned out yet, however the main stops will be Georgia for waterfalls, Black Hills SD, Glacier National Park in Montana, Banff National Park in Alberta, Vancouver BC, Seattle WA, and Salt Lake City Utah. The plan is to stop along the way where we feel inspired to shoot and heavily document the trip for social media. I’m sure I’ll be positing more about it as the trip approaches, but I’m really excited and looking forward to it.

       Other upcoming things in the next couple weeks are a couple shoots at the Wyvern Hotel for some events they have a real estate shoot on Monday, and Funk Fest on Friday and Saturday of next weekend. Really looking forward to Funk Fest as its been a couple months since I have shot a concert. Hope you all are well out there!

        Its been a long time since I have made a blog post! I’ve been extremely busy with work, photography, and personal life things that I have neglected this. Hopefully I can get back in the swing of things as I try to build my photography brand and expand upon it.

        So much has happened since my last post (June 19th) and if you follow me on social media you have seen that. I did get the “job” with the Wyvern Hotel and I have been shooting for them since July. The trip to Colorado was awesome and I got some great images from that trip that I posted. Didn’t shoot as much as I would have liked, but that was not the main purpose of the trip so it was expected.

In August I got the opportunity to shoot the final Warped Tour show in Fort Lauderdale. It was amazing! I got to shoot a couple of my favorite bands (Motionless in White, The Amity Affliction) and discovered a new band that I really enjoy, Ice Nine Kills. The rest of 2018 was filled with local music festivals, real estate shoots, and some portrait shoots.

        My photography has really taken off in many areas since November. I have focused more on planned shoots and making time to get out and practice my craft. That has helped improve my work as well as helping me ground myself. Photography is an escape for me, and as a good friend of mine said “puts me in my happy place”. Lately I have been most happy when I am shooting, exploring new places, and editing photos. I have also enjoyed surfing social media, seeing what other photographers are doing as well as getting positive reinforcement on my work. It gets me thinking positively about where I want to take this in the future. For example I would really like to get into shooting and editing videos along with my photography. A couple years ago I discovered a photographer/videographer in Toronto, Peter McKinnon, who creates amazing content on YouTube. The guy literally went from a few thousand followers to over 2 million in a year and a half. He now gets to travel the world on someone else dime. His work is amazing and he’s someone who influences and motivates me to improve and take chances.

        So whats upcoming for me? Well in the immediate future I am doing a photographer’s Eco Tour in Babcock Ranch tomorrow morning. One of my fellow photographers, and the person I credit for getting me excited about photography again a few years ago, Chris Burkett, will be attending as well. I look forward to shooting alongside him and seeing how he works. 

        I have recently been asked to display some of my work in the Wyvern Hotel by the Visual Arts Center here in Punta Gorda. I have been trying to narrow it down to 8 images that I will have printed and framed. The images will be on display for 6 months starting at the end of February. All images will be for sale so I encourage anyone local to go check them out. Of course all of my images are for sale so if there is something you would like please contact me.

        Lastly I have a huge opportunity that I still don’t want to discuss openly until it is confirmed that will happen in May. To this point it will be the biggest thing I have ever shot and I am very excited about it! Stay tuned in the coming months.

        Hopefully I can stay more active on this blog moving forward. There are a lot of big things upcoming so that should help me stay focused.