Free to Succeed

Launching in March 2009

I found that without an understanding of what your body of work may look like in your mind, you can’t pursue it well enough for you to invest in it. And we all know what happens to a goal when it isn’t invested in, passionately. I’ll define goal setting as different from vision. Goal setting requires no passion. You can set it and forget it – it is simply a marker. A point that, if achieved, will signify success and the need to set another goal. Vision – a whole other beast. It requires careful thought, tons of prayer, waiting, answers, signs, and time – then comes – vision. A vision of what that final road will look like. And with all that, to pursue it has to lead to passion. You couldn’t possibly strive for something that has been architected in your mind through thought, prayer, waiting, answers, signs, and time without passionate pursuit. It is almost tangible. You can’t help, but roll it into action.

I attended the Free to Succeed tour hosted by David Jay. Jasmine Star was a main presenter – a wedding photographer with some really great work and one of the first people I was directed towards. I may only understand my current enjoyment for wedding photography and the related because I love events, details, fast-paced shooting, and a story that I can attach my heart to. But, how this field is a place to seriously express myself is something I was still fleshing out. Before the event Jasmine Marie Ko snapped this shot with her PS with me and Jasmine Star. I was a bit “star-struck” (sorry I really didn’t know how else to describe it but to use what is probably a sickly overused pun).

Yah. Hella cheazin’. Seriously? Well anyways… I opened this entry with my understanding of the word vision and how it has been applied by me. I have learned, especially in these past years, that God has given me vision all my life. I pursue that vision with a passionate internal fierceness, and the end result is often nothing short of amazing. Now that doesn’t mean that what I envision manifests itself in a way that I thought it might – but the way there – completely life changing. Bottom line, photography has become a passionate pursuit. One goal? Launch my portfolio, brand, website, etc in March 2009. Why then? It’s in the vision… what else is in the vision?

Well, at the tour, aside from learning a few ways to launch your business and some tools to do so, Jasmine Star posed a question that she implied was extremely key to answer before starting your business. Give 5 words that describe you. Not your photography. Just you. When you have that – it has to show in your pictures. Not because you printed the words, “artsy” or “modern” or “fun” next to your picture, but because you can read in those pictures who you are. You may not think many people can exactly read what a picture says about a photographer, but you’d be surprised what conclusions you could draw if you took someone’s body of work and thought to draw a print of who this person may be like. I think for me, that is what attracted me to Jasmine Star’s work – that drive – she kept saying she is driven. It shows in her work, at least to me it does. Blog-wise, she just lets it flow… And her story of how she went into photography is even more of a reason why I followed her work. She's awesome and definitely one of my photographic inspirations... Anyways, J* said to turn to friends and ask them what they thought one of your words might be. At that moment, Jasmine Marie Ko turned to me and said, “Galang, I would have to say one word for you would probably be – passion”. She had no prior knowledge of this word and its particular meaning in my life, so it was pretty crazy to me that she said that. In fact, at my senior retreat in High School, one of the affirmations given to me was that I possessed a deep passion – so it does hold a lot of weight when it is re-affirmed almost 7 years later. My fiancé easily agreed with this assessment, “yup, that’s you!”.

I found that photography is the one art, thus far, that has seen my passion show through it throughout time. Not every single time, mind you, but throughout time… I hope my passion can show through, along with the other 4 words I’m still working on… And being an art form, me showing through is probably pretty important. Inherently, when something like my passion is showing through this medium, a vision for it has to have been laid in the foreground. My unique inborn natural quality of pursuant passion – well? what do you do with that – looks like it just needed a vision to continuously express itself through… Thank you God for my photography.