Well it has certainly been a minute since I updated this...
Life in PA has been great for us. We've fully embraced the east-coast way of life again, and the kids have come to love winter as much as the other seasons (mostly at least haha!). Seasons... something I knew I missed, but didn't realize how much. I look forward to every season, all for different reasons. We go outside and do more stuff in PA than we ever did in AZ (where the sun is trying to kill you for about 1/2 of the year). We still love living at the lake, I'm there almost every day, either with a camera or a fishing pole...
The kids are getting big - we now have an 8th grader and a senior this year. I ended up picking up a 2010 JKU "Islander" edition for Charlotte a few months ago from one of the guys I coach football with, and she's been doing well with that (knock on wood!). We are going to be doing a photoshoot with it as part of her senior photos, so I'll post a photo of it then. Our plan is to recreate this shot, but with her Jeep (she also ones one of me doing the same lol):
The guy who I mentioned previously who was helping me with posters is now my photography partner. Our little side hustle has BLOWN. UP. We went from casually shooting some stuff to now being the official photographers at two local high schools. We cover sports, do the T&I portraits (team and individual), cover their media printing, and more. We also cover a number of school events, like homecoming, plays, graduation, and more...
A local superstar stud - this one was turned into a poster for graduation.
A local 3 day tournament this past winter...
A pic from when my daughter's team won the district championship this past year...
A few of you with good eyes may recognize Gina, the famous "No Chick-Fil-A sauce?" girl, who goes to one of the schools we cover. She's so sweet and has taken her 15 minutes of fame with a lot of humor and dignity. She's graduating, so we won't see her next year but we know she'll do great!
As you can see from the various watermarks above, we run a number of social media pages on FB and IG. We have a few thousand followers and grow consistently every year. FB/IG tells me we get about 15,000 engagements a month (obviously that slows during the summer), not too bad for a small town. On top of taking >150,000 photos a year, Shawn is getting busier and busier with commercial and media stuff. Here's an example of a small sign we did for a local tattoo shop. We also do a handful of real estate jobs (photos for MLS listings)...
I haven't done much to the LJ and was pondering selling it for a while now (it's just so fun to drive!). It is bit too small for hauling the family around, it can't be used as a backup if I need to borrow the Mrs. Grand Cherokee (since my wife has no interest in learning how to drive a manual), and it doesn't have enough cargo space to haul my photo gear around (even with the backseat folded out of the way). I ended up making a comment on a somewhat random FB post and lo and behold, someone reached out to me about selling it. He came out for a test drive and we ended up making a deal! He's coming to pick up the LJ in two weeks.
I won't share any more details yes, since I don't want to steal the new owner's thunder (in case he wants to make an introductory post), but will say that he has some plans for it and will mainly use it for hunting and fishing trips. What am I going to replace it with? Well, I guess you'll just have to wait around and see...
Life in PA has been great for us. We've fully embraced the east-coast way of life again, and the kids have come to love winter as much as the other seasons (mostly at least haha!). Seasons... something I knew I missed, but didn't realize how much. I look forward to every season, all for different reasons. We go outside and do more stuff in PA than we ever did in AZ (where the sun is trying to kill you for about 1/2 of the year). We still love living at the lake, I'm there almost every day, either with a camera or a fishing pole...
The kids are getting big - we now have an 8th grader and a senior this year. I ended up picking up a 2010 JKU "Islander" edition for Charlotte a few months ago from one of the guys I coach football with, and she's been doing well with that (knock on wood!). We are going to be doing a photoshoot with it as part of her senior photos, so I'll post a photo of it then. Our plan is to recreate this shot, but with her Jeep (she also ones one of me doing the same lol):
The guy who I mentioned previously who was helping me with posters is now my photography partner. Our little side hustle has BLOWN. UP. We went from casually shooting some stuff to now being the official photographers at two local high schools. We cover sports, do the T&I portraits (team and individual), cover their media printing, and more. We also cover a number of school events, like homecoming, plays, graduation, and more...
A local superstar stud - this one was turned into a poster for graduation.
A local 3 day tournament this past winter...
A pic from when my daughter's team won the district championship this past year...
A few of you with good eyes may recognize Gina, the famous "No Chick-Fil-A sauce?" girl, who goes to one of the schools we cover. She's so sweet and has taken her 15 minutes of fame with a lot of humor and dignity. She's graduating, so we won't see her next year but we know she'll do great!
As you can see from the various watermarks above, we run a number of social media pages on FB and IG. We have a few thousand followers and grow consistently every year. FB/IG tells me we get about 15,000 engagements a month (obviously that slows during the summer), not too bad for a small town. On top of taking >150,000 photos a year, Shawn is getting busier and busier with commercial and media stuff. Here's an example of a small sign we did for a local tattoo shop. We also do a handful of real estate jobs (photos for MLS listings)...
I haven't done much to the LJ and was pondering selling it for a while now (it's just so fun to drive!). It is bit too small for hauling the family around, it can't be used as a backup if I need to borrow the Mrs. Grand Cherokee (since my wife has no interest in learning how to drive a manual), and it doesn't have enough cargo space to haul my photo gear around (even with the backseat folded out of the way). I ended up making a comment on a somewhat random FB post and lo and behold, someone reached out to me about selling it. He came out for a test drive and we ended up making a deal! He's coming to pick up the LJ in two weeks.
I won't share any more details yes, since I don't want to steal the new owner's thunder (in case he wants to make an introductory post), but will say that he has some plans for it and will mainly use it for hunting and fishing trips. What am I going to replace it with? Well, I guess you'll just have to wait around and see...
