This is a journey into traffic...

Nice... I have a blog now :0, so does that officially makes me cool? LoL... I'm guessing only if people actually read it.

Well I've yet again found a talent to turn into gold... Funny how things work themselves out. I'm not going to sit here and lie saying things like, [in the voice of the guy from the clear eyes commercials], "I started taking photos at the tender age of 5" or "I was born to be a photographer". ...Nope, truthfully I only starting taking photos because I was a web designer who ending up getting tired of paying people for professional photos. One day I said bump that, went to best buy, and picked up me an xti... and started making it happen.

The thing is I started to like taking photos a lot more than designing web sites not to mention I hate.. I repeat.. HATE the business side of web development! So after purchasing a camera, taking a few snap shots here and there, and finding out I sucked... I did what any genius would have done... I got with someone who knew what they were doing, and that's when I found the web site www.spb2.com "Steven Benthem II". Well I'm not the type to wonder what if so shoot I called him, and found out that he was a pretty cool dude.. not rude and arrogant not most photographers. After the call he asked me to stop by the crib to see if I could handle photo retouching, and I was like shoot it can't be too hard... LoL boy was I wrong, I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I'm still wondering why he didn't just say something like "you know what? maybe this is not for you". But the one thing that web design has taught me is patients, even though I was making people look like cartoon characters he still gave me more photos to edit... Long story short he gave me so much stuff to edit I almost told him to go to hell! After a while I started to feel like the dude from karate kid.. enough of this wax on, wax off crap... when do I get to FIGHT! Well I asked him.. "you know I've been doing this editing dance for a while now... haven't touched my camera.. Wud up with that?"... I think he said something like "you must first learn to crawl before you can walk" or some crap like that.. p!$$eD me off... lol. But hey next day I got to shoot, and I quickly found out that the learning curve wasn't going to be anything like the web.. Welp after ISO this and shutter speed that, I actually caught on. I started taking photos of friends (my Shakey, Bubba, Daenah, Chirmekia, Mark, Eric, and Cris) and then on to graduation, so after a few months of shooting I asked him you know "how am I doing" and his response was "well you know your at that point where people are probably saying "I have this friend who takes cute pictures". I know your probably thinking man this dude here, but I think that was all I needed because that's when everything changed. By this point I had a chance to meet 2 other photographers King David and Cory Dixon, both with sick ports. We all hung out and showed off work and talked tips, and of course I did have much to trade, but I learned a lot. Welp school was out, Summer Summer Summer time LoL, and I received a call for a modeling shoot from a client Krystal Goff... Man I've never done so much research on anything... Well what did you expect? I didn't want to take her money and give her crappy photos. The day arrived and you better believe every body was there Steve, Cory, and David.. Just in case lol. Although I was nervous as I don't know what while I was shooting.. wait did I mention the first part was topless?.. .. um yea.. LoL! Any way the shoot went a whole lot better than I expected, and I ended up with a ton of good photos. A few more months went by and I was in TSO (the eyeglass place) and I was really in to the ads that were posted through out the store. I have yet to figure out why, but I called Steve and asked him what type of photography does he specialize in and he said portraits; well for some reason I instinctively knew that wasn't what I wanted to specialize in. I want to shoot photos along the lines of what I was seeing in the ads. Being the person I am I went and picked up every fashion magazine I could find... Elle, Vogue, Bazaar etc. you name it and I had it. I started to also get into high end retouching, so I started to study.. and study hard.. I was looking for catch light, shadows, I even studied how to dodge and burn.. I study lighting and retouching more than I studied my school work. Hard work pays off! I found the best makeup artist there is "Michaelyn Barrett", not knowing it at the time, I decided to give her a try, and she turned out to be an absolute beast! Shoot after shoot we began to grow better and better, some people even called us a "dream team". I'm not one to brag.. not my style, but it did help my confidence, which is always good. Now I'm shooting what I want, and posting photos every where! I believe I'm addicted to facebook.com and modelmayhem.com, I can't blame myself because I love the response I get from people. I need it. Other than my Shakey and kids, its what drives me!

The Promise:
If you guys keep fueling the fire (commenting and showing love) I'll keep shooting and demanding your attention with each image!
cool..? ok, cool!

To sum it all up...

Now... I mean right now.. today... I'm shooting stuff I would have never thought I could.. I mean like I said I only wanted to shoot photos for web sites. I wouldn't have imagined actually liking it, and actually hanging up web design.. ain't life grand!


Is it me or is the first post always the hardest one!?!

Later,

Marcus

Oh yea Photos! Well for this first post I'll just show progress... cool?

Started here...



















Ended up here...