It’s funny to start over again, after years and years of my last blog, posting multiple times per week for literally years, to start from nothing, is, well, a mixture of things. Mostly I’m excited about it, and also asking myself, “dear goodness why didn’t I start this three years ago when we first moved to Boise and I started to transition my business?” There’s lots of good answers for that, but the biggest one was because I was trying to arrive in a new place, and to understand what that meant. Of course I know that moving is a huge deal in life, but everytime I do it, I’m never prepared for how off things feel, or for how long they feel off.

By now I’ve certainly arrived in Boise, and I love it so much here. Mountain biking from my house, miles upon miles of dirt trails, and I love watching the dramatic light of the high desert as it spotlights it’s way through the Treasure Valley. I’ve come to love the community, it’s a beautiful mix of a city with so much to offer, and yet it’s a small enough city that everyone knows each other.

The reason I’m writing this post is for it to be some sort of foundation or marker. I want to write out what I’ve learned and what my business is about, make a declaration about what I’m offering to the world through my business.

First and foremost, I believe business is simply about service. It is about how you show up in the world and serve others, and that’s really it. Talking “business” can get really complicated, but at the end of the day, it just comes down to what are you offering to people, and is that something people need? If so, you’ve got yourself a business.

Here’s one of my favorite images from my career so far, everything lined up perfectly for this. It was shot on assignment for Oregon Wine Press and was featured on the cover of one of their episodes about the transfer of ownership of Vista Balloon Adventures. I shot this when we lived in Oregon, but built a relationship with the new owner of Vista Balloon Adventures, who was an awesome and fun guy who left his successful corporate banking job for adventure businesses. once I moved to Boise I realized that he had moved to Oregon from here.

My next big commitment is to being myself in business, living with an open heart, and responding from that open heart. I’ve been in business since 2006, and the basis of me becoming self-employed was freedom. That’s what I wanted, and what I still want more than anything else. However, I’ve been through phases, short and long, where my business defined and consumed me. I’m lucky to have an amazing family, that has helped to keep me balanced, but I still have lost and sacrificed myself for my business. It’s not ever worth it. Here’s a photo from Americana Pizza, locally owned and locally awesome. This was photographed for Rivershore Development for their Midtown project.

I want my business to offer something to this wonderful city and it’s people, be an expression of the love and beauty that I experience in this life, and to take amazing care of my family. To me relationships are the best thing in this life, and that’s part of why my work is full of people, being themselves and doing their thing. It has given me so much joy to document people in both photo and video and allow them to be seen and heard. I know from so many years of self-employment, it can be very lonely, people don’t really know what you do all day everyday, and I love that my work can help people be seen, heard and understood. I still love being on shoots and having employees of my clients ask me how they can see the photos and videos, and I can see that they’re excited about them, for them it means something to be documented. Here’s a photo of Chef Jesse from Red Hills Market, using a baguette as a baseball bat and absolutely crushing a sandwich ball out of the park.

For me business is all about collaboration too. Due to the pandemic, I think it’s been said even more than normal, but we are all in this together, and we’re on the same team, even those of us who offer the same services and solve the same problems for our clients, we are stronger together.

Here’s a few more of my favorite pictures from over the years of my career…

Welp, that’s all for now, now I can start doing other posts on top of this. Here’s to living with an open heart in this amazing, wild world. Much love.

Bryan