For those that watch this site, you may have noticed a slow reduction in how much this web site has been updated. Since the only source of original material for this site is yours truly, you'll have to also notice I've reduced my overall involvement with photography in general this last year. To most external observers of my free time, they wouldn't see any differences at all in how much time an effort I put into photography. This is especially true on a day to day basis. Actually, the reduction has been real and quite significant if consider the total number of photographs I save every year. If it weren't for the month of December and two weddings, 2004 would've gone down in the annals as the least productive year in my photographic career. For comparison purposes in 2002, I archived 3304 different images. In 2004 not counting December and the two wedding events, I shot only 2500. Even then I hadn't discovered stitching images or panoramas which are notorious at soaking up hard drive space for single images by taking six to 15 images per shot. Essentially, I shot twice as much in 2002 as I did in 2004. Why is that?

In 2002, my day job was a relatively medium level position which actually allowed quite reliable opportunities to take time off. Compared to 2004 where I position was a senior level operations director of 5,000 people, my time off was less reliable or non-existent. My typical work day was five or six days a week leaving the house at 6:30 in the morning and getting home between 7 and 7:30 in the evening. I barely had enough energy at the end of the day to see why my wife was up to and catch up with the news. I had little time for photography. In fact, if you look at my efforts between my trip to Japan and the summer, I little to show for photography. It was a very quite time for my creative side.

So, what's going on now? Why did things turn out so well in December? How did I get the opportunity to turn around my 2004 and actually make it a banner year? It's called "Job Transition". Yup, that's right. I'm now transitioning my career and taking up a new position that hopefully will yield me lots more time off--at least enough so that I can control things a bit. I am retiring from the US Air Force and am taking up a new career that has be essentially doing the same thing as I'm doing now but at equal pay and at a much lower level of responsibility. Some one asked me a while back "what are you look forward to most in your new job?" "I'm looking at making my flight briefs better". For those that don't know, flight briefs are the bed rock of every mission and unfortunately, it's something we take for granted too often in our line of work. As a result, when time gets short improving one's flight briefs falls off the plate. Along with improving the those little but critically important things at work, I hope to take advantage of more time to pursue my other passion--photography.

Anyone seeking a career transition and has a passion that's not their career should consider a few things I tackled while pursuing my new direction. Unlike just about anyone I work with, my job is not my life. It sure looks like it sometimes from the hours I hold but I realized about 10 years ago, my job is not my life. It's a great day job but that's just about it. About six months ago, I sought mentoring from one of my former bosses that I keenly respected for his typically out of the box thinking and straight forward mannerisms. I asked him what I should consider when seeking new employment. "Tom..." he began. "No matter what you do, you have to keep photography in your plan." I was taken aback by that statement especially from someone that I respected and had honestly made lots of sacrifices to reach the levels he had. He continued "The best leaders somehow find time to participate in their passions while simultaneously doing their work." "In fact, these same people typically referred to themselves by their passion--ranchers, farmers, car drivers--instead of their work titles--administrators, leaders, generals, and managers. There's lots to think about here if you're like me and have tendency to be a slave to work.

This is where the career transition comes in. I take these lessons from my dad that had four fruitful careers in his lifetime. It's never too late to start something new. And, just because you've been doing it for so long doesn't mean you have to keep doing it forever. The career transition is an opportunity to reset the baseline and establish a new set of standards to which you conduct your day. This means if your standard is to limit your days to 8-10 instead of 10-12 to enjoy non-job activities, that's a new direction. If the new standard is to take at least one weekend a month and devote it wholly to a photography trip, that's a new direction. A career transition can be used to first establish what's important to you and your passion and then building the world around that. A career transition can be about assessing what's important, starting from ground zero, then building a new life to go along with this career.

While to you my career transition doesn't seem like much of a change, I constantly have to remind myself of what's important--pursuing photography on a regular basis is at the top of the list.