Christmas tradition.

Here are some photos of my favorite tradition with some of my best friends.
To most people, this looks like pure pain but I can tell you it’s one of the most enjoyable and memorable parts of my year.
I’m not too familiar with the science of cold water plunges but for me, it’s all about getting my body to do what my mind tells it to.

When Walter and I first started this tradition on Christmas 4 years ago it was a lot harder for me to get my body in the water.
Now 4 years later there isn’t much thought behind it.
We get to the dock strip down and jump in.

In the end, the goal for me is to carry this mindset into my everyday life.
To end procrastination and to gladly run headfirst at the things I don’t want to do but that need to be done.

True pain is the avoidance of doing what needs to be done.

To end this blog I want to share something I wrote in my journal years ago.
”Seek pleasure and you’ll find lasting pain, seek pain and you’ll find lasting pleasure.”

Olivia Ponton

On display for you.
Without manuscript.
Without my penmanship.
Maybe you could understand me. 

Make.

In critiques people always ask you why you made the images you did.
I find that to be kind of a shit question though.
Making images is somewhat subconscious and closer to brushing your teeth daily than it is to painting.

At least for me I don’t always want to be thinking while I’m shooting.
Yes you can plan the images you want to make but it’s the repetition of making images that sharpens your eyes.
The “why” doesn’t always come about before the images are made sometimes that happens once you put the images together. 

Rhode Island

Nothing is perfect but what you say to yourself should encourage you to strive for perfection.

Right now in my life, I have 3 hobbies.
The first is photography which is also my career, the second is jiu-jitsu, and the 3rd is training my dog.
Photography taught me the most valuable skill I have ever learned and that is how to practice.
If you want to get good at anything it takes a few simple repeatable actions.

Action number one- is consistency. Practice every day or as frequently as possible.

Action two- Research you need to learn new techniques from other people, books, or the internet.
The more places you research the more ideas you will find and the more you can experiment with these techniques.

Action three- Be okay with failing but do not beat yourself up for it.
I used to beat myself up a lot when images did not go as planned but that only made me push photography away.
Telling myself that I sucked at editing made me hate editing but when I first started it was something I loved about photography.

Action four- have a community to communicate with. Whether this is online or in-person people love to talk about their passions. Yes, there may be a lot of gatekeepers out there who think they have the magic bullet to success in your passion but the people who are at the same stage as you often bring the most value to the table. Beginners and novices are eager to learn and often much more eager to share than experts are.

Action five- is assessment ask people for honest critiques! Ask people that aren’t afraid to hurt your feelings! A dishonest opinion that panders to your feelings is one of the most toxic obstacles to your growth.

With that, I hope you are all getting better at your hobbies and enjoying them along the way.

Ben's Bachelor weekend.

Had the most amazing weekend with this motley crew for my friend Ben’s bachelor party.
It’s not everyday that you get to cut loose with your friends and this felt like a much needed break.
When we first got up to New Hampshire I grabbed my camera and started walking around taking photos.
This is something I do on every trip but for some reason it felt different.
Subconsciously I was pressuring myself to make great pictures immediately and I was not having fun shooting.
It felt like I was on a job and had all this pressure on me.
As I looked around I said to myself “fucking relax, just take what you feel.”
In that moment I let go of the idea of taking compositionally sound images, I stopped worrying about aesthetic, and I just took photos of what felt good to me.
Down time needs time down time, and work time needs to be work time.
I think you can have fun with both but they need to be treated appropriately.

Once I let go of this notion I picked up my camera whenever it felt right to me throughout the trip.
The photos I was taking were only for fun and it felt symbolic being with my childhood best friends and returning to a simpler form of photography.

In short the end result isn’t always what’s most important it’s the process of making over and over again and still enjoying it.

I’m grateful for these days and the people I am able to spend them with.

Bitching doesn't help anything.

Has there ever been a time where all you wanted to do was bitch about your life?
Yeah we have all been there and today after a few days with minor inconveniences I let it all out.
It didn’t make me feel any better.
Hearing myself bitch out loud made me feel really dumb.

This brings me back to a conversation I had a few days ago with my girlfriend Meg.
I had a dream board I made about where I wanted my life to be in early 2019.
I haven’t looked at that board since the day I made it and to my surprise I have every single thing I put on that board except one.
( We’ll get to that one thing later. )
The point I’d like to make here is that your life now was most likely your dream life just a few years ago and for some reason we expect there to be a parade when we get to the finish line.
Unfortunately there are no finish lines in life besides your death and you wont be there to celebrate that anyways.

Instead of sounding preachy now I’m going to talk from my own experience.
When I am not grateful for things in my life I cannot move forward.
This is because my negative attitude and feeling of lacking makes me work less.
These thoughts compound further thinking and of this is a head game that cannot be won other than through action.
The only time I have ever complained in my life about other people, circumstances or other bullshit has always been because I was not doing what I knew I needed to get done.

With that I am grateful to have such an amazing girlfriend to experience life with and to create photos together.
Meg is featured in the photos below and she’s always been my favorite subject and today I just had to remind myself how lucky I am to have a space and a partner to shoot with.

P.s. The only thing I don’t have from my 2019 dream board is a space where I can connect with nature.
I know it may sound silly but I’d really like to have a space I can call my own one day where I can just check out and make the work I want to make without the bustle of a city.

How to land your dream career.

It’s the beginning of the summer and I’m continuing on with a visual diary of my day-to-day.
Photographing every day was something I used to do religiously and since 2020 I really slowed down with this.
Needless to say, I’m really enjoying just taking snapshots throughout the day and it’s lead me to ponder while I’m out walking.
Last night a thought hit me after I saw an ad for a training video on how college kids could spruce up their resumes.
In my adult life, I have never gotten a job I have applied to.
Part of this I understand I did drop out of college and I understand that on paper this could look like a lack of commitment.
The other part that I don’t understand is that I was qualified for many of these jobs.
This is something that really used to bother me.
Now I am grateful as hell that I’ve never had to work for somebody else’s dreams but I didn’t always feel this way.
At one point I applied to over 150 jobs in a single year and I can’t tell you how many times my inbox came back with “Although your resume was impressive we regret to inform you blah blah blah”

I used to feel pretty worth this from these emails.
What was I doing wrong and what was wrong with me?
Did these people even take the time to look at my work rather than just skimming my resume?
Probably not and eventually I got a full-time job that I didn’t apply to.
I was shocked as hell but after speaking with the company they found my website through my linked-in page and they loved my work.
Finally, somebody had taken the time to read these blogs and see my actual photos not just skimmed my resume.

Fast forward a few months after working with them and I hated it.
Spending 16 hours a day shooting and editing and making half of what I was making while being self-employed was not enticing to me even if they were going to pay for my health insurance.
Again it felt like I was working to fulfill someone else’s dreams rather than my own.

This made me think about a lot of things, how does one get clients, how do you keep them, do I have a problem with having a boss, etc.

To answer all of those questions the first thing you need is good relationships with people.
Helping people will get you clients and so will making good work consistently.
Let the way you treat people and your work be your resume not a piece of paper.
Secondly, you keep a client by addressing their needs.
If they say that want more motion in their photos gives them more motion.
Nobody wants a grape soda when they asked for a grape Gatorade.

Do I have a problem with having a boss and the answer to that is no I have tons of bosses being a freelancer some are reasonable and others are a total pain in the ass.
The goal here is always to make an outline or scope of work beforehand so all of these bosses can know exactly what they will be getting from you.

Communication is everything when you are working as a freelancer.

To sum this up it isn’t easy to get a job when your emailing a piece of paper people can easily say no to.
What’s most important is to build relationships in person in the industry you want to be in and to help people out.
I’ve still never been hired at a job I’ve applied to but I’ve gotten hundreds of jobs through people I‘ve given to.

All thee best,
Atticus

Photograph your now.

One thing my parents always did that I really loved was that they always took photos of random party’s and events in their lives.
Still to this day I credit this as a big part of why I fell in love with still images.
Something about opening a shoe box and seeing an entire years worth of images really had a way of gripping my imagination as a child.
This process felt like losing myself in a great movie only I had to imagine the narrative and glue together what it would have been like to be alive during the time the images were taken in.
Thinking back on those shoe boxes filled with images I now see them as a visual journal each of my parents kept for themselves and both having their own styles.
My moms photos were always very candid and point and shoot like and my dads were almost always posed and while traveling with little hand written letters on the back of the most important ones.
I prefer my moms way of shooting because it’s really a time capsule of family and friends as they are in the current moment.
Looking back on images like that is the best because of how nostalgic viewing them is 10 years later.
Photographing seemingly insignificant things often makes the most interesting images later on in life.
These images are not trying to be anything but in the present.
This is why I’m not a big fan of when people photograph only vintage things.
For example vintage cars in street photos, old liquor stores and motels etc.
It’s a cop out because we see some of the most famous photographers from the 60’s and 70’s photographing these things so we try to copy them and do the same.
What people on instagram often ignore is that those photographers were photographing was their present time.
The images they were making were often considered bad for their time period.
It wasn’t until decades had passed until some of these photographs were actually seen as art because of their composition and nostalgic value.

Everything has a place.
Every photograph means something different to someone so I don’t mean knock that style but I do think there is value in documenting the “now”.
With all that being said my intent with these photographs isn’t to add them to my portfolio instead I’d like to add them to a journal.
To leave candid notes about nights I don’t remember much from or days that seemed to be just ordinary.

(All of these are shot on the fuji xpro3 which I recently bought just to mess around with)

All the best,
Atticus

Kill em with Kindness.

Have you ever had someone who doesn’t like you for one reason or another?
Even if you don’t mind them they just seem to attack you for no reason whatsoever.
This isn’t so common but over the past few years, I’ve had one person that always seems to have an opinion on everything I wear or do and always voices it in an attacking manner.
My feelings on the matter are really simple, “fuck that guy” but my attitude towards it has to be different.

I learned this lesson through some mistakes during my college years and as a mentor had really put this into perspective for me.
In my mentor’s first career he was a journalist and when he was new on the scene a veteran journalist kept smearing his name.
Although he had never met the women wherever he went he was told about how awful she was painting him.

Years later my mentor ended up working for the same media outlet as the woman who was smearing his name.
He made it a point to always kill her with kindness and finally after years of this other journalist hating my mentor she gave in and passed him the biggest interview of his career.

The point here is to always kill people with kindness because you never know who’s going to end up in front of you on your path to success.
Burning bridges will only make your path more narrow.

Choose to focus on the good.

I was walking with my family Sunday and as I looked around at how happy my dog was I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude.
How lucky am I to be in a relationship with such an amazing person, to have such a sweet pet, and to be able to work a job that is not only challenging but fulfilling at the same time.
I’m pretty damn lucky.
I didn’t always feel this way about my life and at times it’s easy to lose sight of what we have.
Your perspective is everything and one thing I notice about going to visit our friends in family in Connecticut is who complains and who doesn’t and how it makes me feel.
It puts into perspective any complaining I do myself.
None of which does anyone any good.
Living in New York is difficult but it’s a challenge I am proud to be facing.
So whenever Meg and I head to Connecticut for the weekend we like we’re sort of heading to an oasis or a sort of getaway.
The differences between Nyc and Connecticut are really quite large.
#1 is the space. You have space in your home’s apartments, yards, towns, etc. In NYC space is a luxury of the ultra-rich.
#2 Life is much more affordable in Ct.
#3 Peace and quiet.
#4 If you are a local your family is close by.
#5 Communities are much larger in Ct whereas in Nyc communities seem to be their own little groups.

It’s almost painful to come home and hear people constantly complain about every little thing.
For some people, life is so good in Connecticut that there is nothing else to talk about other than their problems.

Let’s not forget I am guilty of complaining probably more than most people but I have always appreciated the nature and the beauty of Connecticut.
It is a fabulous place to live.

I left our weekend feeling a bit confused about my interactions this weekend.
Some were so insanely positive and uplifting and others seemed to pull all the energy out of me.
With these feelings, I want to make a more conscious effort to be positive about my day-to-day life because the people I came across this weekend that were being positive really inspired me.

If you stub your toe when you wake up and curse the day, then the day will continue to be cursed but if you wake up and stub your toe and are grateful to have a bed to stub your toe on you’ll notice more good throughout the day.
It’s like when you get a new car and every driver on the road seemingly has the exact same car.
What you focus on grows.

With love,

Atticus

Without pain there is no progress.

Earlier this week my mother and I had an interesting conversation about pain.
We came to the conclusion that pain will never go away unless it is faced.
When something is painful it is good to sit in it.
To feel it, and even do nothing about it.
It’s also important to seek pain in thee form of new and uncomfortable opportunities and experiences.
Escaping pain will only put the pain on layaway to return for a later date.
Whether your vice is drinking, medication, partying, or being busy these things are just bandaids that will mask the actual issue.

Pain is also subjective which means you can change the way you view it.
As a boy I was filled with anger I was told I should be mad at the world for not having my father.
That pain consumed me for years and it wasn’t till my late teens that I actually began to face it and slowly that pain turned into forgiveness.

The way I view pain now is that it is a grind stone that sharpens you like a blade for the battle of life.
As corny as that sounds you can either let that grind stone sharpen your blade or you can let it dull it.

All good things in life come from walking through something painful.

No worries.

As life goes on I appreciate the simple things more and more.
Things like a morning routine, a walk with the dog, a cup of coffee, or time spent together.
It’s all the extra shit that makes life stressful.
Worry has no place in my life and although it is not okay to avoid things we need to manage the bullshit.
I guess thats all I really have on my mind today.
Manage the bullshit in your life and the good shit will fall in line.
Don’t let it stress you out just handle it.
This mindset really helps me appreciate the good things in my life.

TIME EFFORT CONSISTENCY

My baby girl got sick last weekend with a case of Kennel Cough. (Dog Bronchitis)

It was pretty nerve-racking hearing her cough so hard she was puking and that it was so consistent, happening every few minutes.

We tried to let her sleep it off because every emergency vet we spoke to had an 8 hour or more wait time.

Then at 12:30 it had gotten to the point where none of us could sleep because Rowie wasn't doing well with the sickness.

We then took her to the ER and waited for about 4 hours for the doctor to see her.

Thankfully she is making a full recovery and she can finally play again.

We had to let her rest a bit for a week and she hated that lol even though running around the apartment would make her cough she didn't care because all she wanted to do was play.

Thinking back to getting this dog I somewhat expecting to be madly in love with her from the day I got her but that was kind of half true.

At first, I was in love with her undeniable cuteness and how fragile she was but after the first 2 weeks and very little sleep all I could think was what the fuck did I get myself into?

Having a dog is no easy task especially when you're working from home, training her 3 times a day, and still have to get them the proper exercise they need.

Eventually over time though you grow to love the dog an insane amount like it's your own child and they seem to work their way into your family.

All the training sessions start to pay off and if you missed one it feels like your day is off not just your dogs.

Raising a dog has been one of the most fruitful things I've ever done and although it has been tough at times that discomfort has made me grow.

I think passions work in a very similar way.

It's scary and uncomfortable to put yourself out there and to show people you suck at something.

Whether that is art, dance, photos, sports, etc. having a dog is the same thing.

If you are not passionate about your relationship with your dog it shows like a sore thumb the same goes for photography.

It takes daily effort not talent.

If you're shit at either the only formula you need to get better at is TIME, EFFORT, and CONSISTENCY.

This is the only way for the cream to float to the top.

As soon as you wake up.

Sometime you forget about what drives you.
What makes you want to move and achieve more.
It’s easy to get distracted but there are ways to help reel your focus in.
For myself healthy decisions tend to lead to better decisions.
Specifically in the form of routine.
The first thing ingested mentally or physically should always be something healthy. 

Not instagram as soon as you wake up, and not an unhealthy breakfast.
This is part of the reason I’ve been feeling off for a few months now.
( I apologize if it seems like I’m always off or in a funk in this blog but this is where I come when I have a problem that I need to work out.)

Finally I feel like the tide is coming in and my motivation is starting to swing the other way now.
I’ve started to work out again and I’m making better decisions for myself than I was before.
Paying attention to my morning routine has really helped me over the past few days.
What do you do as soon as you wake up?

The secret sauce.

Our puppy Rowie is now 4 months old which means we’ve had her for 2 months.
Man I don’t know if I would get a puppy that is 8 weeks old again.
Maybe next time I’ll wait until their 12 weeks or older.
The first 2 weeks I was really questioning if I had made the right decision.
They literally pee and poop every 15 minutes when they’re awake and at first the training was pretty frustrating.
More than anything I realized how much patience, consistency, and research is required to be a decent dog owner.
I studied for 2 months before we got Rowie and I am still studying everyday.
The crazy thing is even if you study your heart out none of it makes sense until you have a dog right in front of you and everything you studied isn’t working.
This is where patience kicks in.
I was more frustrated at myself than I was at Rowie when we first started training together.
Then as days progressed I could see the change in her behavior slowly but surely.
Now training is more fun than ever before.

The reason I bring this up is because photography had a similar trajectory for me.
When I was younger I wanted to make great photos but my hands, my eyes, and my skills could only make shit photos.
It takes time and no matter what person promises you an instant fix or preset to your photo work I can promise you the true solution is time and repetition.
Having a good dog, being good at photography, or any other activity all comes down to one thing KNOWING HOW TO PRACTICE.
There are very few secrets to these kinds of things.
I am amazed with this dog everyday and last night as I was laying in bed I found another excuse to practice.

Over the next few months I’m going to take one photo of Rowie everyday and one video.
Whether I post that on here or just print them and make a family album it’s still practice and a great way to cherish these memories.

With love,
Atticus

This might be a weird topic to drum up in my head but it’s one that really had me puzzled this morning.
As I looked at these photos of my brothers (mainly Walter because Zac didn’t jump in the water) I thought of all the times I met people that hated their siblings as I sit here and love my siblings so much.
Now don’t get me wrong there is a time when “Loyalty” is a bullshit disguise for dependency and a blood-sucking energy vampire of a family's resources.
We all have one of those cousins, brothers, aunts, or uncles.
Luckily for myself, one of those has never been one of my siblings and the bond us brother share is unspeakable.
Maybe it’s due to growing up without a father and us all being boys as well.
A commonality like that creates a type of camaraderie that only comes once in a lifetime.
I’m very blessed in this aspect of my life.
I learned early what it means to be loyal and I learned early what it means to forgive (They are really one and the same if you ask me.)

Imagine being punched in the face by one of these guys and being forced to shake hands after, you’ll learn to forgive real fast.
For me, though my brothers always had my back, we always spent time together and challenged each other to do better than the next.

When thinking about these siblings I’ve met that hate each other and the grudges they hold I can’t help but think about my father’s killer.
What a weird feeling to have.
To grow up not having something yet still missing the presence of that thing you never had.
Yet I don’t hate the man that killed my father
I forgave him years ago.
If I didn’t I would have driven myself crazy.
That is what hate does, it drives us crazy because it is not an ill-founded feeling.

If someone disrupts your way of living how else are you supposed to feel?

I don’t have the answers to this but all I know is that forgiveness has always brought me closer to my brothers and days like this are the ones that make me realize just how lucky I am.

Looking for Inspiration.

Whenever I leave NY for the weekend I love staying at my brother's house. His house is somewhat secluded and is just a short walking distance to a coffee shop, restaurants, and a biking trail. It's a place where I can shut off my mind and just walk and shoot pictures. There's less pressure here and whenever I visit my brothers it feels like I'm going home to my childhood house even though that house is no longer ours. I'm grateful for family time and in the simplest way possible I like taking photos of these times. When your taking photos it's easy to feel like you are not present not apart of the moment but when I'm home it never feels that way. 

It feels like I'm in between my work and personal life and that grey area is a place I'm happy to sit in. 

If you're into any art whether that's photos or painting, or recording sound etc. I would try to mix it in with your family time. 

Some of the most powerful work I've ever seen has been of people's friends (ex. Ryan Mcginely, Nan Golden) and families Christopher Anderson, and a friend of mine Jimmy O'donnell who photographed the last days of his father's life dying of cancer in his families living room. 

These photos touched me not only because he had the composure to photograph this tragic event but because he kept shooting after his father passed. The one image that touched me the most was his sisters and his mother crying at the funeral. 

Imagine the looks you'd get shooting photos at a funeral? 

Yet he didn't care because this was his family and his passion and those images will live in my head for the rest of my life because of how they touched me. 

There are also more subtle ways to photograph your personal life like Christopher Anderson's work. It's hard to justify using words to describe someone's images because words do them no justice but some of his photo books on his family usually show his family in beautiful natural light. 

They usually depict the mundane and the often overlooked parts of life that are the beautiful things we remember in the end. 

My last example here which is a totally different angle is Ryan Pfluger. 

His relationship with his father was complicated as a young adult so he decided to photograph himself with his father. 

From what I've read on this project Ryan was taking these photographs to reconstruct his relationship with his father. 

https://cargocollective.com/ryanpfluger/Not-Without-My-Father

If you're looking for inspiration for your creations you're missing it. 

It's all around you in the people you spend the most time with or in the things you love doing most. 

Rowie in Nyc.

Feeling more motivated to shoot personal work lately and to post on here.
I don’t have much to say today so I’m going to let the photos sit here instead.

Night walk.

Let’s be honest no one moves to Nyc for the weather.
We’re here for the people, the opportunities, the constant bustle.
Nyc doesn’t sleep that’s a fact but with so much of the city in a choke hold from covid this place that once seemed like a post card is being tested in ways it hasn’t been tested before.
Still something about this city and its grittiness feels immortal like a cockroach.
Nyc can’t be stopped and if it can survive 9-11 it damn sure can survive covid.

I remember when I first moved here I thought this city was going to be easy….boy was I wrong.
The only thing easy about Ny is getting a chop cheese at the bodega and even that can be challenging at times.
No matter what you are doing here this is almost always a hoop you have to jump through and that is especially apparent now with Covid.

One thing that sits in stark contrast to where I grew up in Connecticut (Not Greenwhich!) is that very few people have parking here.
So if you shovel out your car and a plow truck plows it back in you’re going to have to break out the shovel again.
When I had a car I hated this but that’s part of the price you pay to live here.

Seeing all the cars terribly stuck yesterday I was inspired to take a walk to get some photos before bed.
Shortly after I started my flash died so I only got a few photos but I guess it wouldn’t be New York if something didn’t go as planned.

How to get out of a creative funk.

Inspiration weans and wanes like the tide and throughout 2020 I have never seen the tide so low for so long.
On a regular day, it is rare for me to not get ideas from everyday life but this year hit me differently I felt my drive and inspiration slipping away.
I’ve been in creative ruts before this is nothing new but what is new is how long this one lasted.
It seemed to go on for the entirety of 2020.
Normally when these lulls happen it only lasts a few weeks maybe a month.

So how are artists supposed to get through these times.
I’ve heard other people say “Oh I’m taking a break I’m going to focus on other things for now.”
I get it we all have other passions besides our chosen medium but stepping away from photography has never gotten me out of a creative funk, it has only left itself there for me to pick it up when I returned.

The only way I’ve ever gotten through a lack of inspiration is by shooting through it.
That means picking up the camera contacting new people and making new work.
That’s when the ideas start flowing when you’re in the thick of it.
Not when your behind your screen planning a shoot based on somebody else’s images.
MAKE YOUR OWN IMAGES.

If you’re a photographer out there odds are you’ve contemplated assisting? Maybe.
I did for a year and although there was some good in it ultimately it was not for me.
I was making more money shooting and was actually getting paid on time v.s. getting paid 5 months later by a millionaire photographer who changed his assistance faster than his underwear.
At this time in my life every shoot I was assisting with filled me with endless amounts of inspiration.
I would see the grand set designs or even the simple ones and wonder how I would have photographed the models there.
It didn’t seem to be that way for the other photo assistants, instead, they seemed to be in a rut.
I could understand why with the payments always being late and some of the photographers treating us like shit but then again I couldn’t understand it.
We weren’t working on a fucking emergency room floor or curing cancer so why was everyone always so flat and uninspired?

Needless to say, I left that environment but there was one thing another photo assistant said to me before I left that will stick with me as the ultimate way to not do something for the rest of my life.
I asked him why he was never taking photos as his work was amazing before he had started assisting.
His reply was “I’m trying to learn everything I can over the next seven years and then when I’m done I’ll start shooting again.”
In my head, all I could think was “Jesus Christ if Michael Jordan had that mindset he’d never had made a free throw.”

The lesson I learned from all of this. ^^^^^^^^

Do not wait to be inspired.
Just make and make and make again and if you don’t like the direction it is going in, correct to a new course and make again.

Below is a sneak peek at a new project I am working on with an Olympic fencer who grew up in Nyc.
It’s not done yet but it’s the first shoot that has really filled me with a burning passion for photography again and it has since lead me to get out and shoot so much more.

All the best,
Atticus