Fast Forwarding

Criticism is something I still have trouble handling, but I am getting better at it. And, sort of a miracle, I’m getting compliments as well, and believing them. Whoo for me, this might actually be working 😉

It’s been two months since that post, my life has been going up and down since then. I’ve photographed a wedding, some bands, played a bit with a new camera, and just tried to have fun and get myself out of being stressed out. And I think I did an admirable job at that. I’m not completely stress free, but I do try to tackle things as they cross my path and not let them wander around until they get me down.

Some of the more memorable highlights of the past two months.

Took photos at a wedding. I had a complete blast, it really was a challenge for me, have never done something like this before. But for some reason, if I don’t think about everything that could go wrong, I like a challenge 🙂 There are of course some things that I could have done better. But luckily, I’ll probably have a second chance at wedding photography in April next year. Go Wolfy, you can do this 😉

I photographed a lot of bands. Heideroosjes and Intwine being the biggest two names. Dutch bands, all of them, most of them even really local. But that was fun to do as well. Really pushing myself to stop thinking about the technicalities, but really thinking about how to make the best possible pictures. And although it is a slow process, I am seeing progress. More and more pictures have captured the feeling (or at least some feeling), instead of being technical perfect but boring pictures.

Winning tickets is fun, even if you don’t really want to see that particular band. So I won tickets for a sold out concert of the Artic Monkeys in one of the biggest pop temples in the Netherlands. Went there with a good friend of mine, and just had a blast.

The way I won them was fairly fun as well. I had my car radio turned in to a certain station, and while I was waiting for some traffic lights I heard they had some tickets and the way to win them was to drive by the studio, and honk that horn. Luck would have it that I firstly live in the town where the studio is located, and secondly, that I was standing a couple of hundred meters from that studio. I drove by, honked, waved up to the DJ, waited a bit, and saw my tickets slowly glide to the ground, waiting for me to pick them up. What can I say, sometimes lady Luck smiles my way 😉

At that wedding, I met this girl. Well, met might be the wrong word, noticed is more like it. I hadn’t seen her during the reception, but a later search of the photos proved that she was there. She just has this uncanny ability to almost completely disappear. So I didn’t notice her there, but I did notice her at the after reception dinner. She was sitting across the table from me 😉

The table was arranged in a U form, with space for the servants in the middle. Made it easier to serve people or something. Doesn’t really matter, but it did make the distance to cross during conversation about 3 meters. And with 30 other people seated at that table, also in conversation, making a lot of noise.

But, I did talk with her, small talk, exchanging some interests, and that was that for that evening. I did try to find out a bit more through the groom, but he didn’t really know her, and the bride was already in the hotel room, getting changed for the honeymoon.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, insert some dropped hints by the bride about wanting to set us up together. And then me starting to talk to her on hyves. After that we moved on to MSN, and within a week we had set up a date for a meet, face to face 🙂

And meet we did, at my place, I cooked dinner, we both enjoyed it. We talked a lot, about deep stuff, about silly stuff, about everything, and anything. We enjoyed each others company, and in the end we kissed. Set her off at her train back to home (2 hours travel, ugh, why me?), and went home myself to get some needed sleep after that weekend.

The monday it slowly started to sink in, but it also started to become a bit unreal for some reason. So I really wanted to see her as soon as possible, which would have been tomorrow. But this christmas is going to be her first christmas since her mother passed away. And she is having a bit of a tough time with that. She prefers to be alone at the moment, until at least after Christmas.

So my timing sucked, I should have gotten in contact sooner, not the week before christmas 🙂