The quiet period is coming to an end. January and February usually pass as quiet months. Winter means few models from outside the area travelling through. Sometimes other opportunities present, but the cold and waves of snow and ice this winter have kept things fairly quiet even locally. Some shoots of course, but few as even local shoots seemed to fall victim to forecasts of snow more than once the last couple of months. That’s changing as March arrives. The first promises of spring tease in the air. People begin to move about the country again now that ice doesn’t blanket most of it.
My posts around the change from last year to this one focused around some frustrations from the last year. The last couple of months have given me time to make peace with much of that, and I look forward to the coming year as it starts to pick up. My experimentation has been mixed, but the secret of experimentation is that it’s designed to fail. The mistakes are learning opportunities to build upon.
I’ll be heading out west again this summer to Las Vegas for work. I’ll be extending the trip with some additional travel, though I’m not sure how much yet. The disaster that last June’s trip became has me a bit gun shy. During that June trip almost everything went wrong from the drive to the airport to the flight home. The normal lies somewhere between that worst case and the much better return in November and that’s where I debate. I’d love to take the time to enjoy the whole west coast from San Diego to Seattle or Vancouver, but that seems a little too far. Too many logistics that could break, too many days away, and other good, sound, logical reasons.
In truth I worry it’ll end up like the trip from last summer if I push it too far. When I returned in November the June trip led me to keep the trip tightly scheduled and my time for the unplanned short. So I had no time for the unexpected moments that arose. I didn’t get to work with some people because of my schedule, and what time I spent in Phoenix in particular was constantly either shooting or getting ready for a shoot. Being too busy seems better than not being busy at all. Is it better to rush through at a madcap pace or take the chance of leaving time for quiet leisure and the unexpected? The unexpected hasn’t been my friend of late, but I feel comfortable coming toward it again.
I don’t know what I shall do yet. I feel California along with Nevada are almost certainties. I have places I want to see there and I’m not sure the next time I’ll get back out west after this trip. There’s much of the country I’ve not seen in a while and I’d like to get back to those places. I’d like to add the Pacific Northwest, but again the logistics make it tricky. I have time to decide so the decision can be debated a bit more. The longer I debate though, the more likely I will find myself in the northwest this year.
One thought to “Moving to Spring and Planning for Summer”