Not sure how I’m feeling about this holiday, to be honest. State of the country and the world not withstanding, even on a personal level, our Fourth left a lot to be desires. I chronicled our travel woes in my last two blogs posts, so I won’t beat that dead horse. Now sets in the family factor, attempting to get along with one another and failing miserably by day three. It’s that romanticized few weeks leading up to a trip and having thoughts of the grandparents and great-grandparents laughing and having fun. Smash cut to the reality of politics, racial slurs and in-fighting amongst family members, and that’s when I check out.
It wasn’t all bad. I just needed a few minutes to vent. @vermillionfox and I needed an entire day to recover after two days at the airport with a five year old. Again, @moony was our MVP making so many trips to and from the airport to drop us off, pick us up, and again, drop us off. We had a nice day at Adezzo coffee shop in Scranton, PA. We made time to eat at my favorite restaurant in the world. The following day we had to prepare for a big shoot with my long time friend, Ryan Ashley Malarkey, the winner of season 8 of Spike’s Inkmaster.
I’ve shared photos of Ryan in previous blogs here on Steemit in my previous post “Exclusive Steemit set w/ Inkmaster winner Ryan Ashley!”. Each time we shoot, it’s an endless struggle to outdo our previous collaboration, and this one was on relatively short notice. The shoot ended up being outstanding and I do feel we set a new personal best. @vermillionfox shot some remarkable BTS footage which she’ll be posting shortly. You can follow her @vermillionfox for more from this shoot. Here’s a super early Steemit sneak peak of this haunting shot of Ryan from yesterday.
We also got to see fireworks, albeit at volunteer firefighters bazaar. I did manage to hunt down an authentic Mediterranean food truck for a killer chicken gyro and the sacred white birch beer soda that I long for when in Minneapolis. The fireworks mentioned are presented by this crazy guy here in Scranton, PA known as “Pizza Paul”. He owns a chain of pizza shops that do very well and every year he spends an absurd amount of his own money on fireworks that’ll beat or match anything you’ll find in the country.
@vermillionfox and I took a few sparkler photos just to cheer up our holiday […which you saw at the top of the post]. Fourth now come and gone, I’m looking forward to a relaxing week that’ll afford me the time to catch up on edits from Viva Las Vegas and the anticipated Steemit video project we shot recently. I’ve got two big shoots in NYC next Monday so I’m praying this starts to feel like a vacation.
Thanks for reading. For more photography, art, illustration and thoughts on life, please follow me here at @kommienezuspadt! Happy Fourth to you all.