Rafting down the Delaware River, July 2010
It’s been a little more than a year since JLP opened the NYC branch (took the plunge?) and my wife and I began our married lives together in the city surrounded by boxes. Now once again breaking down boxes (we only moved 3.5 miles this time to Columbus Circle) I thought it would be helpful to take stock on the grand experiment.
Personally the first year has been fantastic even if I haven’t seen all that much of my beautiful wife as she fought the good fight (and won/survived!) in her intern year in medicine. We both love living in the city and seeing friends (images above from my camping/rafting trip last weekend) and being in the thick of pretty much everything you could ever want to experience. Manhattan is all of the things that you have heard it is (expensive, loud, insane, smelly, etc.) but it’s been beautiful walking these streets, our streets, watching the seasons change and lights flicker.
Professionally it’s nearly impossible to separate and discern what might be you vs. outside factors… did I listen to pop music because I was depressed, or did listening to pop music make me depressed? Same goes with photography and moving and the fucked publishing economies. Things haven’t been crazy busy but I’ve kept working; often back in Miami, often shooting portraits, and occasionally for slightly less than I believed a job was worth. But it’s our Grand Depression, folks, and that just goes with the reality for most of us. I know that relatively I’ve been doing just fine but of course we all want more and better.
During the last year I’ve parted with a rep (no biggie, I’m back on my own), got to do some traveling (Iceland, Haiti, and the American West), have shot more corporate and advertising work, and started/restarted some personal projects. In the categories that matter I’m really happy and am having fun. That’s a pretty simple metric but I’m trying to avoid spending too much time in my head these days. And working hard and seeing results over the last year has been rewarding.
A year later the most obvious spot to improve in is that I haven’t been as smart or aggressive with my promotion as I expected to be mostly because the economy was so ill. I haven’t set up as many meetings or sent out as many cards to really drive home my NYC/MIA twin cities operation as I could have, and hopefully I can change that in the next few of months. But I have been out meeting people, making introductions, and generally hoping to raise my profile a bit in a slow “I’m going to be around for a long, long time” sort of way. And I’ve also been listening to the market and my own creative drive to figure out what sort of career is actually going to continue to make me feel fulfilled.
After a year of working based in NYC – which has been busier of late I think many of us feel – I’ve started to unravel some of the mysteries. And as I mentioned before there really aren’t that many tricks, just a lot of sweat. You start by preparing yourself, then you strip things down both mentally and gear-wise as far as you can, hire more help and also a car, and then get to work. And my clients haven’t said peep about paying more for it. Basically working in NYC is just more legwork; an extra connection when you were used to direct flights.
I’m certainly missing a whole host of things so I’ll open up the comments to any questions that any of you might have.
