In March 1995, Michael Jordan famously sent a fax to the Chicago Bulls to inform them that he would be returning to the team after retiring 17 months earlier. All the fax said was, "I'm back."
Well, I'm not MJ, and I never retired from doing what I do best, but I am back to regularly blogging, sharing my work, and any other works (videos, podcasts, books) that I find interesting.
Since this is my first blog post in almost five years (where did time go?), I won't just say, "I'm back," but instead share some notable things that have happened in my life since then and some work.
During the past five years, I've experienced some of the best things in my life, and I've also gone through some of the worst moments:
I obtained a Master's in Visual Communications from UNC Chapel Hill's Hussman School of Journalism.
I started a job as a digital video producer at Univision.
Three years later, I left for a Senior Producer role at ReachTV.
I, along with 7 billion other humans, experienced a pandemic.
I started streaming, stopped, and I'll *hopefully* be making a comeback shortly.
I was able to buy a home.
I officially established my content creation business (hire me for all your visual needs).
I attended my first F1 race in Austin, Texas!
I also started a photo booth business (hit us up for your next event!)
I lost my grandmother, the matriarch of my family. The strongest woman I've ever met and one of the biggest reasons I am the man I am today.
I traveled quite a lot (though not as much as I would have liked).
I applied to begin another Master's Degree, this time in Real Estate (why do I keep doing this to myself?)
And lastly, I got engaged to my beautiful fiancé.
To summarize, I've done a lot of adulting over the past five years—whether I wanted to or not and I've quickly learned that that's just life. And that's what makes it great.
The Work
I've produced a lot of work in this time that I've never shared or promoted outside of a quick social media post once it's been published. I plan to use this space on my website to share more work more often. Once the redesign is done, much of this work will also be there, but in the meantime, it deserves to live at least here.
Keeping on the basketball theme and considering it is relevant given the Miami Heat's current playoff run, I will share a body of work I was proud of when I put it together. Last year, I received an e-mail from Getty asking if I could cover the Miami Heat play-in games as they attempted to make it into the playoffs. And how could I pass that up? Especially with Playoff Jimmy in full force.
The Heat ended up losing their first game against the Hawks before winning their last game against the Bulls to make it into the playoffs (and then the Finals, where they lost). It was an exciting couple of days documenting the Heat and seeing the images run online in several of my favorite publications.
The Heat followed a similar trajectory in this year's postseason and, as of the writing of this post, are tied 1-1 in the series against the Celtics in the first round of the playoffs.
Here are my selects from those two games last year:
(you can click on the images to make them bigger)
Inspiration
One thing that I learned early on about being an artist is that you'll most definitely go through some funk. You'll have periods where the inspiration and productivity are endless, where you feel like you'll always be doing good work. Then, there will be periods when it feels like nothing you're doing is meaningful, and you're just fighting to return to the former feeling.
I've dealt with this rollercoaster by listening to podcasts and watching videos about the craft. I recently saw one by Pulitzer Prize Award-winning photographer Patrick Farrell (whom I had the honor of shadowing during my Miami Herald internship) about the power of images. Take a look:
Up Next
I'll be honest; it took a while to get myself this inspired and motivated (five years, yikes) to blog again. I have several excuses: I've been constantly on the move, there have been some significant life moments that I've had to go through, and I work full-time and freelance. But in reality, I know that's what I tell myself to not feel guilty about not doing more. By that same token, I have given myself grace because everything I've mentioned is true, and time has been limited.
But I say all that to say that I'm back. And I'm back for good.