The majority of March I was able to spend some much needed time at home with family and loved ones. From going to a cousin's wedding, visiting old friends, playing golf, and a quick trip to the coast with the girlfriend. While it was amazing getting to be with loved ones. At the beginning of April, it was time to head back to China. This time, we were based in Beijing at the Sports University for a trampoline camp. When I arrived in Beijing, I had an idea on how to better spend my downtime. For the entire month of April, I decided to make a challenge for myself and make a short 30 second (minimum) edit each day. While we ended up being in Beijing for only two weeks and had the camp cut short. I continued with my edits through the rest of the month.   

When I got back to China, I decided to make another challenge for myself. This time was to make an Instagram story video every day while I was in China. Having some practice from the April challenge was a nice warm-up, but it was still a tough challenge to think of something new every day. I completed this challenge for the entire duration of my stay in Shenyang before stopping the challenges when we headed back to snow in July for more training in Les Deux Alpes. Even though we were focusing on training while in France, I was still able to take plenty of pictures from my time there. One of the highlights being a birthday hike with Sabine, hanging with Pan Pan, Hugo, Nick Draxl & Ian Rocca, and a modeling shoot for Chiara for some Dope Snow products.

When we arrived back in China after the camp, I decided to start back up the challenges. This time, not focused on producing content, but more of establishing some new & healthier habits for myself.

Throughout this past spring and summer, being able to learn more about photography and videography was so fun. Although there was a bit of a problem when it came to my learning experience. One issue I was having while in China was to find learning platforms that actually worked. For a while, I was doing YouTube but always seemed to have an issue with the VPN. I tried other sites as well like Skillshare and MasterClass, but they didn’t have much luck getting through the infamous Great Firewall.

Thankfully my friend Ilana recommended me to CreativeLive. After learning about it and seeing it worked in China, I got a Creator Pass and started learning anything and everything I could about photography and videography. One day while I was listening to a podcast from Chase Jarvis and Ramit Sethi. They started talking about the roots of their businesses and what it took to get at there level. Chase said something that sounded interesting to me. In the interview, he stated that when he was getting started in his photography career, he took 100 photos a day. I let this sink in for a bit. While I realize this was nothing new & not brain surgery for someone to do a lot of their craft to become an expert, this was the first time I heard someone put a set daily number on it.  For some reason, this was the first I’d ever heard about someone taking that many photos per day. Curious about this, the next few days I went around taking photos of the area & campus. Thinking that I easily reached the 100 photos, but was surprised that all my running around for an hour or so only produced around 50 or 60. Not being able to fully reach the daily 100 intrigued me.

This made me even more curious about how it would be if I decided to make this my next challenge, but instead of making it last for a few weeks or a month, I considered what it would be like to do a challenge for an entire year. After contemplating for about the week, I decided give it a go. Starting the challenge for myself and calling it the #ChaseJarvisChallenge. Got give credit where credit is due. The ground rules for this competition are simple; take a minimum of 100 photos per day for the next year. The challenge started on August 21st & each day since, i‘ve accomplished my goal. But what exactly do I plan on shooting & what are my bigger goals from this? Since my schedule has been all over the place, I plan on mainly documenting my life, along with dabbling in as many forms of photography as possible. A goal I’d like to have is to have a complete portfolio after the year is finished, learn as much about photography as I can in the next year, along with understanding what I enjoy shooting the most, and would want to pursue.