Hello Blog Viewers, This is the last installment for 2008. If I remember correctly, this past year has been my longest continuous employment in my life as a photojournalist. It will be a year in February at the Houston Chronicle. All previous employment in photojournalism has been punctuated by soul-searching careers in completely unrelated fields, grad school and multiple three-month internships.

In the past year, I've watched my co-workers go out on hum-drum assignments and come back with pretty spectacular work. I have to remind myself that while I was off living on a beach in California driving a milk truck and watching the sun set into the Pacific, these folks were honing their craft on a daily basis.

I'd like to think after a year that I'm starting to hit some kind of groove in my daily work. Once in a while in the past year I would come back with a pretty good photo and then go months without anything decent. Time will tell. There is still plenty of room for improvement.

I think in the next year, my photo journalistic resolution is to bag some projects. Everyone is different, and while I've attempted projects outside of school at different internships, they've always felt rushed and usually fell short in some aspect. I wanted to give myself time to get settled in, let the city enter my blood and find a story organically.

A few ideas have since lined themselves up. In the recent past, the ideas seemed forced and more focused on the academic concept of what makes a good story - almost like listening to a robot play a concerto instead of a musician playing with emotion.

I hope everyone had a good year. Until the next post...

Cheers,

Eric Kayne