Here’s some of the content from my newsletter Issue 11 you can enjoy. Here’s the link to the entire newsletter should you want to read it. And you should, you’ve come this far. :)

Mental spaces...

I am Me in all its "glory", all of the time. With all my failings, all of my successes, I am Me and it's exhausting. I am finally closing a mental cycle and I guess I am only now processing the lows and the highs. I am a very empathic person by nature and my heart is always on my sleeve. It's heavy and I'm tired.

Carrying my Self together and my feelings to myself is like holding water between my fingers. it's precarious and it leaks constantly. So, being my friend/my wife/my kids can be intense at times I think.

So now that I've prefaced the person that is "Antoine", I can tell you that I was in a spiral of self-doubt and negativity of late about my own photographic work. I am always hard on my own work anyways because it is -to me- the only way I will become a better artist... but the negativity was taking over my other inner voice... you know the one... the inner hype man... the one that talks you off the stupid ledge by slapping you behind the head telling you to get yourself together, that you're a good photographer, and that your clients love you.

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just me then? eesh.

Well anyways. That's where I was at. I thought my work was s**t. What I thought was good was no longer good. what I thought was meh was just plain embarrassing. This mood was also precipitated by the fact that the Image Competition at my association of professional photographers was coming up fast and all of a sudden nothing was good enough. I was convinced that I was going to be humiliated.

Now, I'll give you that judging art in a competition is a weird thing... how do you judge something as subjective as art??... but for me, it acts as a good barometer of where my work stands. I usually don't let it control me (not completely), but this time around, I was rattled to my core.

I enlisted some friends since I could not trust myself and entered my selection.

On being grateful...

Skipping to a few days later, Image Competition rolls around and I'm a nervous wreck... but I saw my images perform muuuuuuuch better than I thought they would. So much better that I ended up winning every category in which I had submitted.

Well, that was unexpected.

The stories they contained were good enough to the judges that they deemed them stronger than the other ones. WOW.

It's a weird thing hearing the results come in. It's a mix of "yes, of course. these images are good and I know that", to a lot of "this is a lot to take in and I'm not sure I deserve it", to "my local association is only the first step and I should aim higher"...

I find it all incredibly humbling and I am very grateful for it all. I am grateful to see my work being vindicated even when I don't myself. I am grateful to have amazing clients and friends that see my worth when I don't always do so myself. I am grateful and it feels f***ing awesome.

As much as I wear my heart on my sleeve, dumping my feelings out like that for you guys to read makes me feel quite vulnerable... but I believe in feeling vulnerable. I'm squirming in my seat a bit as I am edging closer to hitting "send" on this episode because I'm not sure I want you to SEE me. At the same time, I think it is important for you to know that I put 100% of my Self in every photoshoot -my sensibilities, my love, and my empathy- and that pushes me forward to become a stronger artist so that I can make better photos for you and yours.

I hope get to work together very soon and I'll be very proud to have worked with you.

Newsletter issue 14