As mentioned in our 2012 year end blog post, we’ve had the opportunity to work with some terrific people over the past few years – people who we’ve come to realize have inspired us in one way or another. Some have inspired us with their creativity, challenging us to think in new ways or to develop our own techniques in creating images that we have collaborated on together – still others have gone further, inspiring us because they do some things that are really pretty awesome. One of those people is Idea Workshop director Jo-anne Sheffield.
Last year Jo-anne ran her first marathon. She RAN a MARATHON. That’s a big deal. And not only did she finish in a very respectable time, but she posted consistent split times all the way to 35K before pushing through the final distance, strides that I can only imagine (and maybe entirely inaccurately) must have been simultaneously the most gruelling and exhilarating (and gruelling!) of the race. I followed her entire race on my iPhone, refreshing the feed as she crossed the finish line. Jo-anne RAN a MARATHON. That really is a big deal.
What was inspiring was not just the fact that after years of building up her distance, from five to thirty kilometre races, she accepted a challenge that would push her running to the most elite level – but also what her consistency and her results tell us about the way that she approached that challenge, both during the months of hard training and during the race itself.
So now, how does that relate to us (?) you might ask.
Well, I can’t explain it precisely – it’s more a process of thought than a phrase, but it relates to the long term goals that Mark and I have for our artistic development within the realm of commercial photography. As we work our way through projects that will, in the end, comprise our life’s work – we realize that as they say, it is very much a marathon – it isn’t a sprint. We have mastered new skills over time and in the application of those skills we are proud to say that we have become consistent – our clients know what they are going to get when they hire us – we have found our pace.
Increasingly though, we have also found ourselves hungry for new challenges and developing a strong desire to take our craft to the next level. We want to create more, collaborate with others, and produce new work that pushes our limits. Our goals for this year may not be as easy to define as 42.2 kilometres on any given Sunday – but we know what they are and we are pushing ourselves to meet them.
Our first priority this year is to assemble some work that fully demonstrates what we can do and the direction in which we would like to go. Of course we will also continue to actively seek new people to collaborate with; people who will inspire us to do our best work yet.
If you are here and reading this we hope it is because you have liked some of our past work and you’re interested in seeing what we do next. Indeed if that is the case then we thank you and we encourage you to keep visiting this blog, we will continue to excitedly show you what we have been working on.
For now, you will find some of our older work above – marathons and road races that we shot over this past year. We are including those photos with this post because I have the feeling that if we included a portrait of Jo-anne without asking, we might get in a lot of trouble.
A LOT of trouble. 🙂
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