There have been a lot of good things going on at TCP lately so I am breaking a little from my usual reflections to post a news update.

            Last Friday I was honored to have an interview with me posted on The Adventure Chronicles for their Friday Focus series.  If you haven’t seen the website, the Friday Focus highlights different characters in the outdoor adventure world and I have to say that I am flattered to be featured in the company of adventurers like Stephen Kotch, Corey Rich and Barry Blanchard, among plenty others.

            On the outdoor theme, I was also very pleased to have this month’s cover of Blue Ridge Outdoors.  Having my roots in Georgia, it is really nice to have some of my adventure imagery circulating around the Southeast.

            Last but definitely not least, I am thrilled to announce that I have been chosen as one of Aurora’s newest Select photographers.  Differing from their stock image beginnings, Aurora Select is Aurora’s assignment division based in New York City.  Always up for a new assignment and a new challenge, I am really looking forward to collaborating on new projects with this amazingly creative group.

            As I mentioned above, this news post is a little unusual for this blog.  If you would like to keep up with the happenings at TCP, please feel free to sign up for my quarterly newsletter.  Just fill in your email address in the appropriate box on the homepage and hit enter!

            See you out there!

    Being a solo traveler and photographer, I pride myself on my own resourcefulness.  I never set out to be a loner, but I can take care of myself and if the situation calls for it, I can go it alone for as long as necessary.  I feel like it is an essential and common trait for all photographers.

            I am resilient to adversity.  I take the hard lessons and keep pushing.  I seek out people and information from the ground up, face to face with honesty, integrity and compassion.  I work hard and I work independently, which usually means I work alone (**as before mentioned, by necessity**).

            I take pride in my approach and feel like I am stronger because of it.  It has given me a sense of power and control over my own direction.  It has given me confidence, it has taught me self-reliance and it has guided me through tough times.  My approach has always taken care of me, that is, until this week.

            This week my biggest strengths became my biggest weaknesses.  This week I found myself immobile, in pain and stripped of my usual self-reliant abilities.  I was sick.  I was defeated and incapable of even standing myself up.  Sweating, freezing, unable to swallow or walk, ears aching and head pounding, I laid in a cheap motel bed groaning in pain and disorientation for the better part of 96 hours.  I was helpless.

            I knew I wasn’t doing a single thing to help myself, but I couldn’t.  I couldn’t take fever reducers at the correct intervals.  I couldn’t prepare any kind of nutritious and palpable food.  I couldn’t change my sweaty sheets.  Most importantly, I couldn’t get myself to a doctor because I couldn’t even walk.  I kept thinking, “How did I let it get to this point?”

            In the days leading up to my predicament, I had been hanging out with some friends and kayakers at the Glenwood Wave in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.  High temperatures had worked their hardest on the high country snowpack and transformed the Colorado River into a 25,000 cfs (cubic feet per second) behemoth.  It made for some amazing playboating.

            On the last morning of our stay, I was feeling a little off and decided to rest in the van.  The day heated up and the inside of the van turned into a convection oven, aiding in my physical and mental plunge.

My buddies told me they were taking off for another part of the state and asked what my plans were.  In my self-reliant persona I said I wasn’t feeling well and that I would catch up with them later.  That was dumb.  Later came and I realized there would be no catching up.  I needed AC and somewhere to be for a few days.  The dizzying 2.4-mile drive from the wave to my motel should have been a strong indicator that I needed a doctor first, then a bed, but I felt I could just ride it out.

I was very wrong.

That one decision changed everything.  Once I was in bed, there was no getting out.  Eight hours into my stay, I started feeling a bit uneasy about my state of helplessness and sent my parents a text message to let them know what was going on and where I was.  Unfortunately they were in the middle of some marathon travels of their own and would not receive the text for another 24 hours.

When we finally talked, I was not myself.  In fact, I barely remember anything that was actually said.  What I do remember was the sound of concern my condition had put in my parents’ voices.  It is a sound you never want to hear, because as helpless as I was, they felt even more so.

With a new perspective, I downed a handful of Advil, waited an hour then made a run for it, literally.  In my state of self-destruction I had neglected to realize that there was a hospital three blocks away from my disgusting, sweaty motel bed.

I must have really looked the part when I walked in because as soon as I filled out my paperwork, the woman at the desk sent me to the lab for a Strep Throat culture.  I hadn’t even seen a doctor or a nurse yet. 

Soon afterwards I was in an exam room with a cheery female doctor who was so excited about my extremely advanced case of Strep Throat that she asked if I would mind being used as a teaching case for her interns.  I was so fired up to finally know what was going on and that I would have an easy remedy that I remember smiling and belting out the words, “Bring ‘em on in!”

You may be thinking, “Geez, what a wimp.  Who writes a thousand words about getting Strep Throat?”

Well, I am writing this because I learned a lesson.  Just like all of the lessons we learn in our lives, it can apply to nearly anything.

In my own self-described confidence, I failed to realize that sometimes you really do need someone else’s help and you need to ask for it.  I could have told my friend I really wasn’t doing well and needed some help getting to a doctor.  I could have asked a doctor for help before going to a motel.  I could have done a number of things that would have drastically shortened my misery, but I didn’t because I was overly confident in what I could do on my own.

Sometimes we just need a little help.  Don’t ever be too afraid or too confident to ask for it.

The room was artificially cool, my fold out stadium-seated desk was uncomfortable and the windowless walls and fluorescent lighting left me without any sense of time.  This scenario would normally rank pretty high on my torture meter, but there I sat taking it all in like a sponge.

As the Memorial Day weekend was in full swing and most Americans were out enjoying their afternoon barbeques, backyard football games or quality time near rivers, lakes and oceans, I was sitting inside.  

I loved it. 

I was in a classroom at the University of Colorado in Boulder wrapping up an educational and inspiring few days at the Aurora Multimedia Workshop.

            The line up of presenters ranged from photographers, film-makers, writers and editors to marketing directors, higher ups in the ad world, Pulitzer Prize winners, company Presidents and multimedia pioneers.  These were across the board innovators and media Ninjas in my mind.

            I watched and listened in awe as James Balog went through his Extreme Ice Survey presentation.  I forgot to breathe while Jim Sheeler talked about what went into “Final Salute,” the story of the Marine escort officer that returned the bodies of slain Marines from Iraq while tending to the needs of the surviving family.  Even hearing Dick Durrance’s account of how a 19-year-old kid (Dick) was able to shoot a cover story for National Geographic was unreal.  So unreal in fact that the audience’s uniform reaction was, “Holy s**t!”  For the techno folks out there, we even had an exclusive first look at Sports Illustrated’s new platform for handling this whole new / multi-media movement.

            Incredible!

In all, it was exhausting but completely worthwhile.  I walked out of each day overwhelmed with the potential we all have as visual communicators and a new drive to put everything I learned into practice.

There are stories around every corner and now we have a variety of new tools with which to tell them.  Why not adapt and evolve?  We have all seen the changes in the publishing world and though no one is completely sure what the new model will be, we should be working toward it.  Those are my two cents anyways.

This may seem like a far cry from my usual adventure story posts, but I disagree.  We are on the cusp of something very different, something very new and something nobody knows how to even describe.  I mean, what is multimedia?  That sounds like the makings of an adventure to me.

“Creativity without craftsmanship is like a million times zero.” 
-Dick Durrance (Aurora Multimedia Workshop Presenter)