And so the story continues...

"The Icy Hot Situation" by Wes Aldridge

Well, as you may have noticed, there hasn't been a new post on Mind of the Photographer since December 31, 2005. That was one calendar year of posting a photo a day. It was a little something I had challenged myself to do, and I'll be damned if I didn't accomplish that little goal. Now that the craziness and stress over posting a photo-a-day is gone, I am going to actually keep this blog going but on new terms.

There will no longer be a shot up each day, nope, no way in Hell. But I didn't want to kill it off all together. I have decided I should keep posting because it is almost a record of my life in a way. As lame as it sounds, I guess it’s like my diary... that everyone who so chooses can read. It is sort of therapeutic in a way, and I was missing it. So here is my first one for the year, and its pretty funny, well, to me anyway.

I went to the office today all pumped up about this shot I needed to do for one of the magazines. It was for the Almanac section of the magazine, and we usually don't do too elaborate of a studio set up for those. That section of the magazine is more or less blurbs of information with a simple illustration with a few of them. I knew I wouldn't be getting a photo credit for the shot, but I wanted to do it in a cool way anyhow.

I had thought about this shot of IcyHot for a while last night and was anticipating it when I was on the way to the office today. I had planned to fire this red gel from behind and make the "hot" feeling in the shot, I think that was accomplished. Next, I meticulously crushed ice with a hammer and some paper towels into desirable-sized chunks to give that "icy" feeling around the canister. After I got it all set up the way I wanted it, I made a spotlight that would project light onto the small 3-inch by 2-inch bottle with one of my studio strobes and a black paper cone. I spent about an hour prepping for this shot and it turned out pretty much exactly like I had hoped for. Victory was mine.

One small catch.

After all this, I looked over my shot list for the magazine and my stomach dropped. Yeah, well, that IcyHot shot was definitely supposed to be damn Vicks VaporRub. When I realized this it pretty much crushed me. So, this shot was worthless for the magazine. Then the light in my brain kicked on... it was a perfect shot and story for the blog.

My German friend Susanne said it best. She liked the way I put photos and words together. I think that might have been what kept bringing other folks back each day too... all 15,000+ hits it got last year. The blog was a story of my life, and everybody likes to read an interesting story. I will make a semi-promise: I will post when it is interesting or inspired, and we'll not throw garbage up for the sake of posting everyday. I think that's fair. Its good to post again.