February Linkspam

How can you tell that we are in a fever pitch in ThesisLand? We’re almost a week late with February’s linkspam.

Also: It’s March, which is my birthday month, and thus every March I give a free bonus to my lovely Patrons. The kind folks who subscribe to me at Patreon make it possible for us to cover some of our bills while I’m wending my way through grad school, and that means everything.

If you’re not a Patron, you can still get in in time for the March bonus! Sign up here – subscriptions start at $1 a month. You know you spend more than that on a candy bar (ouch, remember when they were 50 cents?)

Also this month:

Essays

Never show how you make the sausage… or do you? (Donald Media)

To dust we shall return (Medium)

Blogs/Reviews

Superb Owl 2020: Wave that mustache! (CultureGeek)

Psst. Patrons only (Patreon)

News

Highland denies additional funds for art fair (Highland News-Leader)

Highland to broadcast meetings live (Highland News-Leader)

Feasibility study suggests need for school construction (Highland News-Leader)

Highland moves forward with streetscape (Highland News-Leader)

Photography

A walk through the orchids (Patreon)

The Cheshire Inn (Patreon)

Fiction

The River Bluff Review release event took place March 3 at the Cougar Bookstore on the campus of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. This year’s edition includes two original short stories from me: “Sergeant Curious” and “Dear Katrina.” Here’s the post about it.

And don’t forget that Coppice and Brake is coming out March 21! That one includes an original story, “Shiny People.” You can still preorder your copy for $10 here.

March and April are going to be thin months, folks, thanks to Ye Olde Thesis and a bunch of late-semester gotta-graduate stuff. Jim and I both graduate in May, and we are going on VACATION right after. But there’s some fun stuff on the horizon, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you as soon as the T’s are crossed and the I’s dotted. Thank you for your patience.

Welcome spring!

December Linkspam and Happy New Year!

It’s been a wild month to close out a wild year. The first week was consumed with finishing out the semester, writing term papers and grading my students’ projects.

Then I hopped a plane to Pennsylvania and Washington D.C., for my pilgrimage to the now-defunct Newseum and to visit my family. There are many photos and stories to be told there, and Patrons and Medium subscribers will probably see them first. You might consider subscribing! (See, I can be subtle…)

There are also shenanigans afoot. I’m not free to talk about them yet, but suffice to say “busy” doesn’t really cover it.

Toward the end of the month, I took a bit of a break and enjoyed the holiday with my family. I hope you were able to do the same. But now it is a new year, and we must roll up our sleeves and set about achieving the impossible on a daily basis.

Also this month:

Essays

The richest man in town (Medium)

Reviews/Blogs

CultureGeeks pick best movies of 2019 (CultureGeek)

News

‘Don’t become known as a pothead community’ (Highland News-Leader)

Highland residents to vote on pot issue (Highland News-Leader)

Report shows Highland pool is ‘functionally obsolete’ (Highland News-Leader)

Residents speak in favor of Highland pot dispensary (Highland News-Leader)

Photography

On Assignment: The Quad Preacher (Patreon)

#thankyoupatrons

It is ironic that today is #thankyoupatrons day, when I have been so slack the last three weeks in providing content for my loyal patrons.

It has been a trying semester – but so have they all! It is a great privilege to be where I am, to study these complex and difficult subjects, to conduct research into issues relating to journalism and my advocacy on behalf of the profession. It is also a great privilege to be requested for so many conventions and signings and speaking engagements, and while I may get very tired in the annual Fall Deathmarch, I never forget that it is a privilege.

My freelance journalism has stepped up of late, with magazine gigs beginning to supplant the local news. The local work is important, steady work, but magazines pay much better, and gaining more steady work in magazines will help support my family. (Also, I am famous for writing too long in my nonfiction. Magazines like that.)

I find it somewhat ironic that, a year into my graduate studies, I have found reinvigoration of my fiction writing as well. Two of my stories have been accepted into anthologies in the last few months, and I just received word that two more stories have been accepted by a literary magazine.

And thanks to the Medium platform, I’m starting to gain success in creative nonfiction: the personal essay. It’s small money, but it’s money, and that’s lifeblood to the freelance writer. That is another aspect of my work that grad school has opened up to me, one that I truly enjoy.

My patrons support my Patreon through thin months like this one and months where I have new content every week bolster our budget, help pay our bills, and take some of the pressure off me to kill myself chasing low-paying gigs to fill in the budget. 

My family is surviving – in fact, thriving, despite our insanity of putting three (3) adults through college at the same time. The Patreon is part of that, and I cannot thank them enough. 

And I hope you might consider joining them. The photo essays, travelogues, short stories, personal essays and more comprise some of the best work I’ve done, and I would love to share it with you.

http://www.patreon.com/edonald

Fourteen months and counting.

A cute article from the Freelancers Union caught my attention this morning: This freelancer threw herself a company party and you should, too.

It’s a little too cute – I can’t quite get behind giving myself a speech or a team-bonding activity with just me. But I can definitely get behind the happy hour.

In all seriousness, somehow the one-year anniversary of Donald Media kind of slipped my attention. July 27, 2018 was the day I departed the world of daily news, but this site launched more than a month beforehand: June 11, when I announced my impending departure and launched the Patreon, which was my first freelance endeavor.

It’s funny – a lot of the things they tell you to do when you go freelance were impossible for me. I could not begin freelancing on the side to build up a client base while I was still at the newspaper, because it would have been a violation of my terms of employment to write for competitor papers while I was on staff. Other than my fiction work , I had to wait until I was actually gone before I could query potential clients.

It’s kind of like jumping off the high dive and waiting until you’re in midair before you see if there’s water in the pool.

I didn’t go splat. I didn’t immediately start making six figures, either. I started in what I knew – local news – and that continues to be a major income stream for me. I branched out into magazines and find that they really suit me well. I used to joke at the newspaper that I was built for magazines, because I was famous for writing too long. It turns out that wasn’t a joke.

I did stumble quite a bit that first six months, because I realized why the experienced freelancers shook their heads sadly when I shared my exciting plans to freelance full-time while going to grad school. That first semester nearly killed me and I was only taking two classes and teaching one. This semester is actually easier with three classes as student and one as teacher, because two of them are independent studies. And by “easier” I mean that I’m not staring at myself in the mirror and chanting “you have not made the biggest mistake of your life” and “yes, you are smart enough for this.” They shook their heads because they knew that “full time” for a freelancer is a hell of a lot more than 40 hours a week punching a clock at a desk.

It did get disheartening sometimes, especially in those early months when I only had one or two clients and my Contently portfolio was thin. There’s also the matter of my family: I have a husband and son who are also in college, and sometimes we are up to our eyeballs all at the same time. I have an obligation to my family for my time, support, food and finance, and that requires diligent effort.

Then my work took another side turn when I took a class in creative nonfiction. It was just supposed to be an elective to supplement media studies, but it turns out I absolutely love it. I was always writing creative nonfiction in the form of personal essays and the occasional rant, but I didn’t know there was a form to it or that I’d be really good at it. Or that people would pay me for it.

In many ways, the practice I got in that class has reformed my image of what Donald Media can be – and really, Donald Media is the term for all my freelance work under one umbrella:

  • Local news reporting (including the student newspaper)
  • Magazine journalism.
  • Volunteer work with SPJ and public speaking advocacy for the profession.
  • Photography, both news and artistic.
  • Creative nonfiction/essays on Patreon and Medium.
  • The blog series: CultureGeek, Patreon, Literary Underworld, and here.
  • Editing and writing coaching in fiction and nonfiction.

All of that is partnered with my fiction work (albeit only short stories until I finish the bloody masters), my teaching, and of course school. I need to pass this semester and two more classes next semester, finish and defend Ye Olde Thesis, and I’m done. I will have the masters, which makes me eligible to teach.

It looks like a lot. It IS a lot. I’m working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, and with that I include the 65-hour weeks constantly on call at my first full-time reporting job with a baby at home.

And yet. It’s stressful and difficult and the money is what it is and sometimes I have to chase it. But I have the great privilege of doing the work I love and being my own master, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

So, happy year one to the troops, congrats on all we’ve done, and here’s to that happy hour.

August linkspam and the road ahead

First, I’m delighted to report that one of my images will be on permanent display in the Ellisville (Mo.) City Hall. It’s “Pigeon of New York,” found here (second photo from the top). It was in their temporary Behind the Lens photography show, and apparently they really liked it!

The annual ebook for my lovely Patrons was finally completed and emailed to all current Patreon subscribers, and I thank you for your patience. Anyone who subscribes to the Patreon this month is also going to get the ebook as a welcome gift. I remain exceedingly grateful for the Patrons, whose generosity allows me to rely on steady income through the sleighride of these two years in school.

The fall semester kicked off in August, and heaven knows that’s going to swallow my life! One of my classes is on anti-media rhetoric, so that should be an interesting theme to my blogging this fall. I’m doing an independent study on the philosophical aspects of media ethics, and of course, I begin work on Ye Olde Thesis. Thoughts and prayers.

And now, to this month’s work! Or at least that which was published this month…

Excerpt 5: Banshee’s Run (Patreon)

Railroad crossing in Highland finally gets traffic signal (Highland News-Leader)

Highland schools get ready for launch (Highland News-Leader)

Life in Highland, Illinois (Patreon, photo essay)

Dear Subway (essay, Medium)

The Beast vs. Brad Admire (essay, Medium)

House of Memories (essay, Patreon)

The $543 DVD (essay, Medium)

Highland focuses on home developer incentives (Highland News-Leader)

The Sunflower Maze (photo essay, Patreon)

Another fall, another semester (blog, Donald Media)

Eclipse fever (essay, Medium and Patreon)

At long last, Othello (review, CultureGeek)

Enrollment up slightly from two years ago for Highland Schools (Highland News-Leader)

I’m off to San Antonio later this week for the annual Excellence in Journalism conference, where I am honored to represent St. Louis Pro to the important business of the Society of Professional Journalists. I will be meeting with my colleagues on the national ethics committee, and skulking about the panels on issues ranging from freelance survival to the ethics of covering suicide. I hope to get free long enough to get some nifty photos and possibly develop a travelogue on San Antonio, which is a new city for me.

I’ll be live-tweeting the conference at @edonaldmedia, so if you do the Twitter, feel free to follow me there if you really want to hear all about the things we journalists do when we’re away from adult supervision. It’s going to be 101 in the shade while I’m there, so whatever’s left of me will be reporting back next week!

One year later

It’s been a year, and coincidentally I was back in the newsroom for a few minutes.

One year ago today was my last day at the newspaper, capping 18 years in one newsroom and 21 years in daily news. It was chaos, of course: the paper in the middle of another round of layoffs, and the president was in town, which meant a number of our people were out of the office being jeered by the public so they could cover his speech.

It was bittersweet and strange, a bit like that dream when you’re falling slowly down a flight of stairs and you wake up before you land.

It was nostalgic, with a lot of memories from nearly half my life bound up in the place and in the people, enough that I needed to encapsulate those memories in a photo essay and, eventually, in writing. 

There’s a better analogy than the falling dream. It’s like jumping off the high dive without being able to tell if the pool below you is full of water, and you’ve got your family handcuffed to you. It might be easier to make that jump when you’re only responsible for yourself and maybe a cat, but when you have other humans depending on you, it’s frankly terrifying.

Could I manage to earn a masters degree in two years while freelancing? Could I gain enough skills and academic credentials to land a full-time teaching position and continue to be of service to my profession? Could I juggle all of these responsibilities while not starving to death or starving my family?

I spent the first few weeks of grad school convinced I had made the second-worst mistake of my life. I didn’t fit in, I was too old, my writing style was entirely contrary to academic expectations, the theoretical and philosophical aspects of research and analysis were… daunting. We’ll go with that. 

But somehow I passed, re-learned academic style (still a work in progress), and began research projects that reflect my passions and aspirations. 

I am officially halfway through my masters degree in media studies, and no one has yet chased me off the campus shouting, “Heretic!”

And I love teaching.

I’m not good at it yet. I’m capable, and I’m learning. My students seem to appreciate me, though I don’t think they appreciate the unannounced news quizzes that pepper the semester’s fun. (Too bad, kids. That’s what you get for drawing me as a professor.) More importantly, their writing seems to improve from the beginning of the semester to the end. 

It’s quite clear to me how much I have to learn in this new profession, but I really love it. I don’t know if I’ve yet converted any students to leap into news reporting as a profession, but they seem to gain a greater appreciation for journalism, at any rate. If I can train them to evaluate good, balanced, smart reporting, to follow the news from multiple outlets and figure out the real from the fake, if I can open their eyes just a bit to the importance of journalism, then I’ve succeeded in my mission, whether or not I get them to become reporters.

The freelancing has been a slower launch, partly because I had no idea what I was doing. If there is a craft to cold-pitching stories to editors, I have yet to master it. But thanks to a number of contacts in the industry, I’ve started to develop some regular recurring gigs, working with local news organizations and some magazines, as well as my fiction editing work. 

The photography has mostly been going to the Patreon, which has been an utter delight. It launched shortly before I left Ye Olde Newspaper, and I’ve experimented with a lot of different content. I’ve tried fiction excerpts, nonfiction essays/rants, photo essays, travelogues, even a recipe or two. The Patreon has become an absolutely essential part of my family’s income, but I have also found it wonderfully stimulating in a creative sense. I’m always thinking of new ideas to share with the Patrons, of places I can go and photos to shoot that might interest them. 

All through the spring semester, I ran the Door Project: I covered my office door at the campus with Magnetic Poetry words, and photographed the fascinating (and occasionally silly) poems left by anonymous passers-by. All of it was chronicled on the Patreon, with a summary on Donald Media.

The last few weeks have been consumed with compiling a promised ebook for the Patrons, for those who joined the Patreon during my birthday week and my original audience members. We’re minutes away, she said as she took a hammer to the algorithm that keeps deleting her footnotes. Another thing I’d never done before: Self-publishing. I’m not sure if it counts, since it won’t be available to the wider public. But it’s definitely on my horizon.

Today was the anniversary, and it was actually a quiet day. The Boy was off to a ballgame with his father, who is in town for the weekend. The Man had to work. So I decided on a whim to drive down to Eckert’s Farm in southern Illinois, because they had created a maze of giant sunflowers. It’s like a corn maze, but all sunflowers, and those things get crazy tall. I thought it would make for some fun pictures for the Patreon, and I was able to pick up some fresh peaches and other tasty items.

And on my way back, I stopped by Ye Olde Newspaper.

It wasn’t actually out of nostalgia. My former work twin* messaged me earlier in the week that a package had arrived for me. I was not sure who had missed the memo after a year that I was no longer employed there, but after she ascertained that the package wasn’t ticking, I promised I’d drop by the next time I was in town. It so happened that the newspaper is only a few minutes away from the farm.

Fortunately there were folks I knew on duty, and we chatted for a few minutes as I collected my package (a book for review). It was good to see the newsroom again, so familiar it might as well be an old apartment where I once lived. It helps that newsrooms never change; they switch out the posters or the computer screens once in a while, but fundamentally, they never change. I promised not to steal anything on my way out the door. 

It felt like full circle. I left a year ago not knowing if there was anything else I could do in this world that would be worth anything to anyone, much less could feed my family. I left in a bittersweet tang that I once described as eerily similar to the emotions of my divorce: regret, sadness, firm resolve that it was the right choice while coated in fear that it might be a terrible mistake. 

It’s a frightening thing to imagine that you can have a different life, but it’s also a freeing moment, what my good friend Frank Fradella might call the Possibility Sense. (You should totally check out Frank’s new book.)

There was no way I could have managed this far without my terrific fans who keep buying my work, clicking the links and supporting me, particularly my wonderful Patrons. Special thanks and a round of applause should go to my beloved menfolk. My husband Jim is carrying more than his fair share of keeping the roof on while I go through this crazy balancing act, and has never wavered in his support. My son Ian has been wonderfully supportive, as well as quite sanguine about going to college with BOTH parents. We’re a team, helping each other through one of the hardest times in our family life, and I couldn’t be more blessed with their love and support as I wade into the final rounds.

We’re still waiting to see if the landing is a splash or a thud. Ask me in another year.

* Her name is Elizabeth O’Donnell. When she was hired, I introduced myself as “Elizabeth Donald, and we are so going to be getting each other’s phone calls.” I was not wrong. 

Door Poetry

It was an experiment, and I think it was profoundly successful.

In January, I covered my office door in Magnetic Poetry. These are the little word magnets you’ve seen many times online and never bought. I received a few for Christmas – “Coffee,” “Book Lover,” “Photographer” and “Nasty Woman.” One of my fellow grad students said it looked like a shotgun blast of words.

And then I left them there.

My office door is on the lower level of the building, which houses mass communications, music and theater students. Many of them walk past my door to leave the building, especially those escaping the music practice rooms and the radio station.

All semester, random poems would appear on my door. The students (and teachers and staff, most likely) would rearrange the words on my door to create the most interesting, bizarre and unusual conglomerations of language.

I was warned it would backfire, that immature idiots would put up dirty limericks and someone would make me take it down. I put my faith in the kids, and for the most part, I was right. (I did remove a couple of words from the “Nasty Woman” set to avoid temptation.)

Each week, I collected the best samples and shared them with my Patreon. (See, I keep telling you the best stuff is on the Patreon. You should subscribe!) But here are a few highlights from this semester, as we move into the quiet of summer.

The first line, “We always know coffee and art,” was from my son as he helped me put all the words on my door. The rest was added in the coming days by unknown passers-by.
This is the most impressive effort of the semester. Actual stanzas. I can’t imagine how long the poet stood at my door working this out, but I am impressed.

It was the highlight of my day each time I came to my office and saw a new poem left for me by the Door Poets. I intend to keep adding to my word-shotgun and exploring what else they might have for me.

Birthday Special! Meet the Muse!

One of the most popular bits of silliness I ever wrote was a series of blog posts called “Conversations with the Muse.” The Muse is the creative, cantankerous voice in my head who yells at me and keeps the writing on track.

For the first ten years or so of my fiction writing career, the Muse (and assorted other voices) worked out plot twists and ways to torment characters, while my saner mind managed the tasks of being a single mom and a reporter. Sort of. My conversations with the Muse were frequent, profane, sometimes more than a little frustrated, and always snarky. They were posted in a private blog accessible only to close friends, now long defunct.

Many, many times I have been asked to compile the Muse posts into a book. Apparently, she’s a popular lady, though she would probably put her fist through the face of anyone who said that.

As I approach my birthday (39 plus tax, and I’ll have words with anyone who says different), I’d just like to tell you that if you ever thought about buying me a present (or even if you haven’t), the best thing you could possibly do would be to subscribe to my Patreon.

All my best material is going on the Patreon these days: short stories, novel snippets, travelogues, photo essays, blog musings, even the Door Project, which has been delightfully fun all semester. The Patreon is an important part of my family’s income, but it has also been mentally and creatively stimulating in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

So I’m taking advantage of a new Patreon feature and offering an ebook as a special bonus to anyone who subscribes between now and March 25. It’s “Conversations With The Muse,” ranging from the arguments over my first novel back in 2003 up to her most recent appearance last month, as well as two short stories in which the Muse led me on a visit down the rabbit hole to visit my characters.

Already a subscriber? Don’t worry, you’re getting the ebook too! Along with my thanks for your kind support and diligently hanging in there while I worked out the kinks in the Patreon system. And if you increase your pledge by at least one level during the birthday week, you’ll get a secret extra bonus!

Sure, you can think of it as a birthday present if you want. But I’m hoping you’ll like what you see, enough to stay and keep reading what I’m putting out there each month. I try to sing for my supper, and I hope what I’m singing is pleasing to your ears.

Excerpt: Feb. 24, 2005

I’m stuck on a part of A More Perfect Union, namely the falling-in-love part. I thought maybe I’d go for a nice walk in the woods along the bike trail near the apartment, and see if I can remember how people fall in love.


ME: So, how do you fall in love?
MUSE: Never did.
ME: Sure you did.
MUSE: Nope.
ME: I made you up. I wrote you. You fell in love once.
MUSE: No, that was Crawford, in Sanctuary. She’s the one who fell in love. I’m the part of you that steers clear of all that.
ME: Oh great. I hope nobody notices I’m walking here talking to myself.
MUSE: Nobody’s here. It’s fucking February. You’re the only one nuts enough to walk on a trail the day after a goddamn snowstorm.
ME: Wuss.
(pass underpass construction site)
ME: I think it’s nice that the bike path doesn’t have to make way for the new road, and the new road doesn’t stop for the bike path. They get to coexist.
MUSE: Very philosophical. Note the graffiti.
ME: Ugh. Little bastards. Is that a tiger?
MUSE: I think it’s supposed to be Satan.
ME: Those aren’t horns.
MUSE: No, but the 666 all around him is kind of a tipoff.
ME: Idiot little gangsta wannabes. Any of them saw anything really bad they’d wet their pants. 
MUSE: Is this what we’re out here for?
ME: Fuck you. I need to think sappy thoughts. When was the last time I fell in love?
MUSE: You do not want to go there.
ME: Good point. I can’t remember how people fall in love.
(stops)
(stares)
ME: What the fuck is that?
MUSE: A stick.
ME: It’s got fur.
MUSE: Dead animal.
(stares)
ME: That’s the severed leg of a deer.
MUSE: Yup, it is.
ME: Deer are my favorite animal.
MUSE: Uh huh.
ME: Is there any WORSE fucking karma than this? It’s you, isn’t it? This is what happens when I’m talking to you!
MUSE: We should report this to someone.
ME: There’s no road anywhere near here! The road is like 200 feet away and 20 feet up with guardrails!
MUSE: Don’t smell anything, either.
ME: Idiot. It snowed. Nothing’s going to rot until the thaw.
MUSE: Ew.
ME: YOU’RE saying ew? You?
MUSE: I’ve got a thing about amputation.
ME: Which of us is the tough bitch? I forgot.
MUSE: That’s the severed leg of a deer. I’m all out of romantic thoughts.
ME: Now there’s no way that scene gets written today.
MUSE: I think we should go home and report this.
ME: Severed leg of a deer. Next to quasi-satanic graffiti. This shit only happens to me.

Patreon changes!

Any new venture is a work in progress, and you have to double or quadruple that when you’re managing a creative endeavor.

The Patreon has become a major part of my work, and like others who have launched one, I’ve found it creatively stimulating. I find I am actively seeking out subjects about which to write, photos and travelogues to create, specifically because I think it will interest the Patrons.

That’s to say nothing about the importance of that income for my family. As you all know, we are a party of three, all in college, and surviving on one paycheck plus whatever I can scrape together.

With that in mind, I decided to rework the structure of the Patreon rewards. I wanted to give more content at the lower price points, because they’ve stuck with me and they should get more for their dollars. I have also created a firm deadline structure for the Patreon, so the posts will be timed more regularly and it won’t necessarily fall by the wayside when my classwork gets insane.

The revised rewards for the Patreon will be as follows:

• $1 per month: Thank you! Your name will be listed on my website as one of my wonderful Patrons; no contribution is too small. You will receive access to exclusive weekly blog posts, which may be on any number of subjects ranging from writing to journalism to grad school.

• $3 per month: You will receive access to at least one photo post from my various photo shoots, along with stories or travelogues about the shoot, location and history, in addition to previous rewards.

• $5 per month: You will receive one short story or nonfiction essay per month, in addition to previous rewards.

• $10 per month: I will critique up to 1,500 words of your fiction or nonfiction per quarter, in addition to previous rewards.

• $25 per month: You’re famous! With your permission, I will put your name in a pool for “Tuckerization” – as in, I will name a character after you in an upcoming work! Plus all previous rewards, of course.

• $50 per month: You will receive an annual ebook of my essays and short stories, as well as a thank-you listing in the author’s note of my published novels, and all previous rewards.

• $100 per month: You’re my best friend. You’ll get a print chapbook once a year on the month of my birthday (or a paperback, depending on what’s been published most recently), a critique of up to 4,000 words of your fiction or nonfiction once a quarter, and all previous rewards.

At each level, existing Patrons should be receiving more content than they had before. And if you have not chosen to join the Patreon so far, I hope you will consider it.

This is going to be a tough semester – I’m taking three graduate-level courses as well as teaching one, and that’s a lot of work. The good news is that more of that work will feed into my interests, and thus may start showing up here and on the Patreon. I am taking a class in cultural studies in media, and another in creative nonfiction. It’s safe to say this is going to bleed over into this work!

As I said back in July, I sing for my supper. The support of my Patrons helps me to feed my family, and they deserve to get what they pay for. Thank you for your support – none of what I do is possible without you.

Baltimore: Here fishy fishy… and a salute to Edgar

The journalism part of my trip to Baltimore will be rightfully chronicled at stlspj.org, as I was there on behalf of the St. Louis Society of Professional Journalists.

But I never go anywhere without my camera in hand, and I shot in the Inner Harbor, the National Aquarium, and Westminster Cemetery, the resting place of Edgar Allan Poe.

The Aquarium was my first real attempt at shooting living things, as I’ve rarely done portrait photography and never tried shooting wild animals. I have so much to learn about photography – every time I think I’ve really got this thing down, a shark turns the corner and reminds me that I have no idea what I’m doing.

It’s frustrating as hell, but it is also exciting: new things to learn, new skills to master, and I get to see pretty things while I’m doing it.

 

Or, y’know, scary things.

Do you want more? The full photo arrays and travelogue will be on the Patreon, so subscribe here if you’d like to see the cognac on Poe’s grave, swim with the sharks and find Nemo. More and more of my writing and photography is going directly to the Patreon, so I do hope you’ll sign up.

In the meantime…. Bruce says hello.

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