My photography has taken me around the world to various locations and into some really wild adventures, and all these hidden stories have been buried in the back of my brain....until today!
SNAP ORLANDO, the only real art event featuring still photography in the Central Florida area, invited me to speak at one of their smaller events.
Founders Patrick and Holly got to talking with me a few weeks back and the idea of my speaking at a workshop at Downtown Credo in College Park came up. After some hesitation and a slight bit of prodding by Patrick, my lack of speaking experience and fear of saying yes disappeared. I committed and then let the lump in my throat get the best of me...... I was booked.
I had three weeks to assemble a talk on how best to capture "motion"! Keep in mind that I have almost 50 Lacie harddrives dating back some 10 years, chock full of crazy images and some never before seen photos as well. My goal was to resurrect some of these for the workshop, and boy let me tell you, was it ever a challenging process.
I was to travel for 13 straight days to San Francisco, San Diego and then to Washington D.C, with about 5 days left before this talk to assemble and color correct the 130 images I finally ended up choosing to feature. I culled these down from about 350 original selects. With a little guidance from top notch producers and editors that I regularly work with, I selected some that weren't particularly my favorites, but the ones that told the story at hand.
Scripting my talk was even harder. How long to talk? What to discuss? Who is the audience? Not doing this on a recurring basis, heck, having never really spoken publicly about my work was hard enough, but to outline it and assemble it into some type of order was a nightmare. This process took me up until midnight every night this week.
In the end, I stuck to about 70 percent of what I had originally planned, swaying off topic every now and then, but for almost 2 hours straight, I think I did a decent job of storytelling, explaining and answering questions for the guests that attended.
I want to thank EVERYONE at SnapOrlando, Downtown Credo, Conduit and to my friends and all the photographers who showed up for my workshop today. There were so many of you also behind the scenes that encouraged me and gave me guidance, who will never even be recognized, and I thank you most of all!
I will sleep well tonite.
Black and White photos by Romeo Guzman, thanks man.....
