Well, I survived an incredibly busy 2011, shooting tens of thousands of nightlife and bar photos. Just at Rich’s San Diego alone, I handed over 11,000 edited photos. I can only imagine how many I actually shot.  Shooting nightlife is a rough job.  Anyone that thinks it’s easy has never done it, or hasn’t worked on packed, sweaty dance floors.  And I would guess that not many people could walk in my shoes as a mom to a toddler, a student, business owner during the day, and freelance photographer all the time.  Whenever someone asks me to “do lunch” or “grab a coffee”, I always laugh to myself thinking “yeah right, I can barely survive my schedule as it is, always things back to back – it will never happen.”  My life right now is extremely exhausting yet completely rewarding.  But right now it’s worth it.  This is where I should be at the moment, perfecting my exposures, networking, meeting new faces, exploring new territories, getting bigger and bigger gigs.  I’m attracted to the synergy of the thundering music, the vibe of the crowd, documenting the moments people won’t remember otherwise, that makes it very rewarding and so photojournalistic.  I get to tell a story through pictures that no one else can tell but me.  I get to create art in a most peculiar place that most people would never expect.  And working in Hillcrest and mostly in the gay community by choice, I get to work and be among some of the most incredible friends and mentors I have ever known in my entire life.  The gay community is so colorful, so creative, so exciting. It is truly an incredible place for me to work, because I get to enjoy such beautiful personalities and create art for them to remember the great times they had with their friends.  It is truly a supportive network from my perspective.  Shooting nightlife is a great way for anyone to get started in photography.  There is a lot of freedom of expression, there aren’t too many rights and wrongs, and I actually find it super easy to figure out manual exposures because I’m simply lighting up the environment, bringing in ambient light with shutter speed, or making cool light trails with second-curtain sync.  And nightlife gives you the freedom to get bored with your style and change it up, try out new techniques, makes 10 photos until you nail what you intended to capture.  I love shooting nightlife, I love to work at Rich’s, I love working in the gay community, and I’m very excited to shoot larger and larger venues. Shooting in Hollywood at Masterbeat was a huge goal accomplishment for me.  Bigger venues are exciting because there is so much to shoot in so little time, and so many things going on all at once.  I almost thought I needed a grocery list to check off to make sure I didn’t forget anything.  And when I got home and looked at the photos, I realized in 900 photos I still missed things. And with that event under my belt, I’m already on target for some huge venues in the next few months that are out of town.  So nightlife photography is most certainly a lot of work, but worth it.  We shall see where 2012 takes me.  Right now, I’m floating on the wind of photography, not guiding this journey, just along for the ride, for now.